Fresh air strikes were today launched in southern Somalia, amid government claims that a senior al-Qaeda suspect believed to have planned the deadly bombings of US embassies in East Africa had been killed in a US air raid.

A government source told Reuters the latest attack had hit an area close to the coastal village of Ras Kamboni, which was targeted by US air raids earlier this week and is believed to be harbouring a number of Islamic extremists. "As we speak now, the area is being bombarded by the American air force," he said.

But his account was disputed by other government sources who denied that the US was responsible for the latest attack, and that the only operations still continuing were by Ethiopian troops backing the Somali government, who last month drove out the country’s Islamists from their many strongholds, including Mogadishu.

In the capital today, there was growing unrest as a rocket-propelled grenade, aimed at Ethiopian troops, missed its target and hit a house, killing at least one according to a Somali government source. The attack, the second since yesterday, when four were reportedly killed in a similar incident, is believed to have involved Somali militia. Gunfire was also heard in the early hours of the morning.

The latest attacks came amid claims that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, was killed after US aircraft targeted a suspected al-Qaeda base in the south of the country.

"I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage," Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press. "One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead."

The claim could not be verified independently and Jonathan Clayton, Africa correspondent for The Times, said it had been met with scepticism in the region.

In America’s first overt operation in the Horn of Africa since 1993, a US AC130 aircraft was used earlier this week to attack suspected terrorists believed to be taking shelter with country’s Islamists in Ras Kamboni, which lies close to the border with Kenya. A large number of extremists were said to have been killed in the attack, which was staunchly defended by the Somali government.

Helicopter gunships peppered nearby areas with rockets, with witnesses reporting many civilians killed, including one source who told The Times that the dead included people who were part of a donkey cart convoy, carrying fruit and sugar.

As well as Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who has evaded capture for eight years, the targeted camp was thought to be sheltering two other key al-Qaeda figures - Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudan.

The group is believed to be behind the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 262 people, as well as the 2002 car bomb attack in the Kenyan resort town of Mombasa that killed 15 people.

Hussein Aideed, Somali’s Deputy Prime Minister, made a plea to the US to bring in special forces on the ground to flush out remaining al-Qaeda suspects, saying his government was unable to do so on its own.

"The only way we are going to kill or capture the surviving al-Qaeda terrorists is for US special forces to go in on the ground," Mr Aideed said. "They have the know-how and the right equipment to capture these people."

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower yesterday arrived off the Somali coast and deployed aircraft to gather intelligence on the movement of insurgents in jungle swamps near the Kenyan border. The swamps are the suspected hideout of the perpetrators of the 1998 attack on the US embassies.

The US assault was the first known direct intervention in Somalia since 1993, when it was part of the ill-fated United Nations mission to relieve famine. That venture led to clashes with Somali warlords, including the infamous Black Hawk Down incident that left 18 US servicemen dead.

The White House said the operation showed that there was no safe haven for Islamic militants. "This Administration continues to go after al-Qaeda," Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said.

But Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, said that he feared the strike might intensify hostilities in Somalia. Somali political analysts and regional experts agreed that the attacks could ignite an Iraqi-style insurgency across a swath of East Africa, where the combined force of the Somali Government and Ethiopian troops are seen as US proxies.

"The US has sided with one Somali faction against another — this could be the beginning of a new civil war," one analyst said. "I fear once again they have gone for a quick fix based on false information."

Analysts say that the US has been buoyed by the Somali Government’s success in driving back the Union of Islamic Courts and feels the time is ripe to wipe out the hardliners. The union, however, denies links with al-Qaeda.

The assault came as Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, said suspected British terrorists were among those who had been taken prisoner or injured during the recent fighting in Somalia.

Speaking to the French daily, Le Monde, Mr Zenawi said that British-passport holders had been fighting with Islamic militia who were driven out last month by Ethiopian and Somali-government forces, along with Canadians and others from Western nations.

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