Western forces raid al-Shabab base in Somalia, reports says

Western forces have raided a coastal town in Somalia, killing a rebel fighter, according to al-Shabab militants.

Foreign forces landed on the beach at Barawe, about 180 km (110 miles) south of Mogadishu, and launched an assault at dawn that drew gunfire from rebel fighters in one of the militia's coastal bases, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, spokesman for al-Shabab's military operations, told Reuters.

It was not clear whether the assault was related to the attack on a Kenyan mall two weeks ago, which the al Qaeda-linked group said it carried out and which killed at least 67.

Shabab's leader Ahmed Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr, said the mall attack was in retaliation for Kenya's incursion in October 2011 into southern Somalia to crush the insurgents.

Western navies patrol the sea off Somalia - mired in conflict for more than two decades - and have in the past launched strikes on land from warships.

Barawe is fully controlled by the Islamist militia with almost no government presence.

U.S. and French forces have carried out similar attacks in Somalia in the past.

Somali security officials gave partly conflicting accounts.

"We understand that French troops injured Abu Diyad also known as Abu Ciyad, an al Shabab leader from Chechnya. They killed his main guard who was also a foreigner. The main target was the Shabab leader from Chechnya," an intelligence officer based in Mogadishu, who gave his name as Mohamed, told Reuters.

The French army said earlier it was not involved in the raid.

A second Somali intelligence officer said the Barawe attack had been carried out by U.S. forces. He confirmed the target was a foreign national, and said another foreigner was wounded.

Abdikadir Mohamed, a senior police officer in Mogadishu, said he believed the attacking troops were American and their target was a senior foreign al-Shabab official.

In 2009, helicopter-borne U.S. special forces killed senior al Qaeda militant Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a raid in southern Somalia. Nabhan was suspected of building the bomb that killed 15 people at an Israeli-owned hotel on the Kenyan coast in 2002.

NATO denied involvement in the Barawe attack, as did EU Navfor, Europe's counterpiracy mission off the Somalian coast.