US strikes at Al-Qaida, kills 20

MOGADISHU: A US attack plane killed more than 20 people with barrages of gunfire in a remote Somali village occupied by Islamists thought to be hiding at least one Al-Qaida suspect, a Somali government source said yesterday.

In the first known direct US military intervention in Somalia since a failed peacekeeping mission that ended in 1994, an AC-130 plane rained gunfire on the desolate southern village of Hayo near the Kenyan border late on Monday.

The US Navy also confirmed it had moved the aircraft carrier Eisenhower to the Somali coast Africa's longest to beef up a naval cordon it had already put there as the Islamists sought refuge in the remote southern tip.