American gunships made two strikes against militants in Somalia, one on an island group, one on the southern mainland proper, targeting al-Qaeda operatives suspected of involvement in the 1998 attacks on our embassies.
Although CNN is relaying an unconfirmed local report of bystanders being killed in the attack, al Jazeera and the BBC are not echoing these concerns. The Somali interim government supports the right of the US to make attacks against those involved in the embassy bombings. I'm sure they're just glad to have the free air support.
These attacks were made possible by the combined interim government / Ethiopian army effort. One of the bad side effects of the kind of "last stand" the UIC has attempted to make in southern Somalia is that they can now be hit much more freely by airpower. When they were still in Mogadishu, we probably had no idea where they were -- and even if we found out, we were never going to go after a target in Mogadishu with an AC-130.
Italian Foreign minister Massimo d'Alema said Rome opposed "unilateral initiatives that could spark new tensions".
...but then, they were passing messages on to their Somali friends ahead of UN actions in 1993, so they already know what unilateral initiatives can do to a UN effort.