Airstrike Rekindles Somalis’ Anger at the U.S.

[cal04]

Somali officials said Tuesday that dozens of people were killed in an American airstrike on Sunday, most of them Islamist fighters fleeing in armed pickup trucks across a remote, muddy stretch of the KenyaSomalia border.

American officials said terrorists from Al Qaeda had been the target of the strike, which they said had killed about a dozen people. But the officials acknowledged that the identities of the victims were still unknown.

Several residents of the area, in the southern part of the country, said dozens of civilians had been killed, and news of the attack immediately set off new waves of anti-American anger in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battle-scarred capital, where the United States has a complicated legacy.

“They’re just trying to get revenge for what we did to them in 1993,” said Deeq Salad Mursel, a taxi driver, referring to the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in which Somali gunmen killed 18 American soldiers and brought down two American helicopters during an intense battle in Mogadishu.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/world/africa/10somalia.html?hp&ex=1168405200&en=568a45b74e1bb43e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[jobycom]

1. They'll have to stand in line behind the rest of the world.nt