US attacks al-Shabab in Somalia: official US military forces have staged a raid against a suspected al-Shabab militant leader in Somalia though it is unclear whether he was killed, the Pentagon says. "I can confirm that yesterday, October 4, US military personnel were involved in a counterterrorism operation against a known al-Shabab terrorist," Pentagon spokesman George Little said. No US personnel were injured or killed, Defence Department spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Pool said, in the operation aimed at capturing a senior al-Shabab commander. A US navy SEAL team slipped ashore near a southern Somalia town before the militants rose for dawn prayers, US and Somali officials told the Associated Press. The raid on a house in the town of Barawe targeted a specific al-Shabab suspect related to a Kenya Westgate shopping mall attack two weeks earlier that left at least 67 people dead, but the US operation did not get its target, one current and one former US military official said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the raid publicly. "US personnel took all necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties in this operation and disengaged after inflicting some Shabab casualties," a US official told reporters on Saturday. Declining to identify the people who died, the official said that "even in these extreme operational circumstances, the US military is very cautious to minimise civilian casualties." The statement was an acknowledgment of concern with the bitter anti-US sentiment fuelled by civilian casualties in US military operations. "The Barawe raid was planned a week and a half ago," a US security official told the New York Times. It was prompted by the Westgate attack. Al-Shabab spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab earlier told Agence France-Presse that commandos had stormed the beach by boat, but blamed British and Turkish forces. "The bungled operation was carried out by white people, who came with two small boats from a larger ship out at sea... one al-Shabab guard was killed, but reinforcements soon came and the foreigners fled," he said. CNN reported the SEALs came under fire and had to withdraw before they could confirm whether the target had been killed. A resident of Barawe - a seaside town 240 kilometres south of Mogadishu - said by telephone that heavy gunfire woke up residents before dawn prayers. The US forces attacked a two-storey beachside house in Barawe where foreign fighters lived, battling their way inside, said an al-Shabab fighter who gave his name as Abu Mohamed and who said he had visited the scene. Barawe has seen Navy SEALs before. In September 2009 a daylight commando raid in Barawe killed six people, including Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an alleged plotter in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya that killed more than 220 people. A resident of Barawe who gave his name as Mohamed Bile said militants in Barawe closed down the town in the hours after the assault, and that all traffic and movements have been restricted. "We woke up to find al-Shabab fighters had sealed off the area and their hospital is also inaccessible," Bile told the Associated Press by phone. Al-Shabab later posted pictures on the internet of what it said was US military gear left behind in the raid. Two former US military officers identified the gear as the kind US troops carry. Pictures showed items including bullets, an ammunition magazine, a military GPS device and a smoke and flash-bang grenade used to clear rooms.