NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) - A freelance journalist said on Sunday he had seen U.S. troops on the ground in south Somalia working with Ethiopian forces hunting fugitive Islamists.
"They were Americans, I have no doubt," the journalist said, referring to helicopters he saw overhead and personnel he bumped into with Ethiopian soldiers at a military base.
Rumors have swirled for days that U.S. personnel were inside Somalia since a January 8 air strike aimed at al Qaeda suspects believed to be among the Islamists
The strike was Washington's first overt military engagement in Somalia since 1994.
But there has been no official confirmation of a U.S. ground presence, which would be sure to inflame political passions in Somalia and the Horn of Africa region where Muslims complain of heightened discrimination in the name of the "war on terror."
The Somali journalist said that while on a filming trip to the Somalia-Kenya border area in recent days, he saw about 30 white men in military dress, some showing U.S. Marine insignia, with Ethiopian counterparts at the village of Kuldio.
The journalist, who works for various local and foreign media but asked not to be named for security reasons, said his vehicle was also tracked from the air for hours by two helicopters each carrying three white crew members.
"We were terrified, because they obviously suspected we were Islamists," he told Reuters in Nairobi by telephone.
"I was sure they were Americans in the helicopters, because we know they are in the area helping the Ethiopians. Then when we reached Kuldio, we saw them land, and the men got out.
"On the ground were at least 30 other Americans at a base with the Ethiopians. They had brown T-shirts and military trousers, some with U.S. Marines' badges on them."
Kuldio lies just a few kilometers from Ras Kamboni, where some Islamists fled after being ousted from Mogadishu on December 28 after a two-week offensive led by Somali government forces with their Ethiopian military allies.
Neither U.S. Embassy officials in Kenya, who also have responsibility for Somalia, nor spokesmen for the regional U.S. counter-terrorism base in Djibouti, could be immediately reached to comment on the journalist's report.
"TECHNICALS" ABLAZE
The Somali reporter said Ethiopian soldiers in the area had told him he could film destroyed Islamist battle-wagons, but not Ethiopian or American military personnel, or else his equipment would be destroyed.
His footage, sent to Reuters TV, shows images of destroyed battle-wagons, or "technicals" as they are known in Somalia.
The journalist said he had counted 85 in a day. "Some were still smoking because the Ethiopians are burning them," he said.
Washington quickly denied last week a Somali Islamist Web site report that its retreating fighters had captured 10 U.S. soldiers, one of whom died of malaria.
Qaadisiya.com, which has been the Islamists' official mouthpiece in recent months, also said "mujahideen" -- who retreated to the remote south after being ousted from Mogadishu -- planned to parade its U.S. detainees in front of media.
But the U.S. envoy for Kenya and Somalia, Michael Ranneberger, dismissed it as "utterly bogus".
Analysts have doubted whether Washington, which had a disastrous peacekeeping mission to the chaotic Horn of Africa nation in the early 1990s, would want to be so directly engaged again as to send soldiers on the ground.
The Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) ran most of south Somalia for six months until government forces, backed by Ethiopian tanks, jets and troops, drove them out in the two-week offensive over Christmas and the New Year.
Source: Reuters, Jan 21, 2007
