A U.S. gunship AC-130 has conducted a strike against two suspected Al Qaida operatives in southern Somalia - one reportedly involved in bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the other said to be group's commander in East Africa - but it was not known whether the mission was successful, U.S. news networks reported on Monday.

The attack, the first known direct U.S. intervention in the Somali
conflict, left "many dead bodies", a Somali government source said on Tuesday.

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The AC-130 rained gunfire down on the southern village of Hayo late on Monday, the source said.

The U.S. Air Force plane, operated by the Special Operations Command, flew from its base in Djibouti to the southern tip of Somalia, where the Al Qaida suspects were believed to have fled from the capital Mogadishu, U.S. networks reported.

A Pentagon spokesman said he had no information on the reports.

The two suspected Al Qaida operatives were not named but CBS News said one was a suspect in the car bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the other was the Islamist group's senior leader in East Africa.

The report said many bodies were seen on the ground after the attack by the AC-130 gunship, but the identities of the dead were not confirmed.

The Al Qaida suspects fled Mogadishu after Ethiopian troops
invaded on December 28 and were tracked with unmanned aerial drones
as they moved south, CBS said.

NBC News reported that U.S. officials said Ethiopian forces, which had conducted raids in Somalia, had gathered intelligence on three potential Al Qaida leaders believed responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania.

NBC reported that the airstrikes were part of an ongoing operation and that the U.S. aircraft carrier Eisenhower was moving from the North Arabian Sea toward Somalia to support the operation.