US military planes last night launched a missile raid against the southern Somali town of Dhoble on the border with Kenya. The US defence department said the strike was against a known al-Qaeda operative said to be in the area. The Pentagon official said the precision strike was aimed “at a facility where there were known terrorists”

The strike was also confirmed by a spokesman for the Islamic Courts Movement, the radical Islamic militia group that controls most of southern Somalia in opposition to Somalia’s interim government.

The spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow told new agencies that the bombs had hit civilian targets and at least four people were killed with several injured including children.

Over the last year the US has launched a number of raids against targets in Somalia either on its own accord or in support of its ally Ethiopia. The Ethiopian army had invaded Somali in 2007 to prop up the Somali interim government as well as to dislodge the Islamic Court Movement which then occupied Mogadishu the capital.