Three U.S. high precision missiles hit a Somali town in which Islamic extremists were taking shelter early Monday.
The village of Dhoobley became a target for the U.S. military because it includes a "facility where there were known terrorists" affiliated with East African al Qaeda operations, U.S. military official said.
The series of explosions wrecked two houses, killed three women and three children, and wounded twenty people, CNN which quoted the local District Commissioner Ali Nur Ali Dherre as saying.
The remains of the missiles were marked "US K.", according to the same official.
The U.S. military officials said the attack was "very deliberate" and that the civilian casualties are regrettable. The village inhabitants fled amid fears of other strikes.
This was the fourth U.S. missile strike in 14 months on Somalia.
"We launched a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists," a top U.S. official, who preferred to speak in conditions of anonymity, told Reuters in Washington.
The locals confirmed the fact that some senior Islamist leaders were having a meeting there and this is why Dhoobley, a remote Somali town 220 km (140 miles) from the southern port city of Kismayu on the Kenyan border, was hit. At that meeting were taking part the Somali politician known as Sheikh Hassan Turki, a local militant cleric, and other heads of a militant Islamist group from Mogadishu. They were reportedly planning an insurgency against the government forces.
When asked about the damage and casualties, the U.S. official wouldn’t give details because, as he said, it was too early to know. He also declined to say what weapons were used.
A local policeman, Siyad, said there were eight wounded by the shrapnel. Siyad only gave his name because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, the Associated Press reported.
Six people were trapped in the debris of the destroyed buildings, a local aid worker told AP.
"A minimum of two bombs were dropped. Between four and six people are in the rubble," the aid worker said. He also wouldn’t use his name because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
