U.S. military forces Monday conducted an operation in Somalia against al-Shabab, the main al Qaida affiliate in the east Africa country, the Pentagon said.
“We are assessing the results of the operation and will provide additional information as and when appropriate,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.
The Pentagon released no further details about the military mission.
The operation came almost 11 months after an earlier raid in Somalia, when U.S. special forces last October failed to capture Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, a Somali-born Kenyan linked to the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in which 213 people were killed, most of them Kenyans.
The Pentagon said then that Abdikadir had close ties to two other Islamic militants who also had roles in the 1998 embassy bombing as well as to 2002 terrorist attacks in Mombasa, Kenya, that killed 10 Kenyans and three Israeli tourists.
In the October raid, members of U.S. Navy Seal Team Six, a fabled U.S. commando unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, retreated without their target after a 30-minute firefight at a seaside villa in Baraawe, Somalia.
Al-Shabab, which means “The Youth” in Arabic, allied itself with al Qaida in 2012. It is believed to have about 5,000 fighters in Somalia.
Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the September 2013 attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that left at least 67 people dead.