French Foreign Legionnaires and American Marines secured Hoddur shortly after dawn Friday, taking a Christmas day prize in a race to wrest Somalia's aid distribution centers from the lawless.
The town was the sixth to fall into the hands of the U.S.-led military coalition. The day before, 750 Marines took Bardera, about 200 miles west of Mogadishu.The 350 Legionnaires and 250 Marines took Hoddur's dirt airstrip and swept through the town of about 30,000. As in each previous deployment, not a shot was fired.
Marine Chief Warrant Officer Eric Carlson, briefing reporters in Mogadishu, said the French-American team reported finding an estimated 5,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines on roads and paths around the town, about 200 miles northwest of Mogadishu.
"Their main task today is to get a handle on the mine situation and clear the airport" for the resumption of food flights, Carlson said. He said no mines were found on the airstrip or main roads.
Mines were strewn across Somalia as part of the clan fighting that broke out after dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown two years ago.
The United States suffered its first casualties of the Somalia mission Wednesday, when a U.S. vehicle hit an anti-tank mine near Bardera, killing a civilian employee of the Army.
The Defense Department on Thursday identified the dead man as Lawrence N. Freedman, 51, of Fayetteville, N.C.
In Bardera Friday, Marines reportedly rescued a group of journalists surrounded by Somali gunmen, who apparently were threatening to steal the journalists' food and equipment.
NBC reported that a team of its reporters, as well as BBC and Reuters reporters, were escorted away from their compound by Marines and taken to the Bardera airstrip, the Marines' base.
With only two more towns left on the multinational task force's list of targets, United Nations officials were drafting plans to take over the job of moving food to the starving and rehabilitating the shattered nation.
No timetable has been set for the changeover in command from the United States to the United Nations, diplomats at U.N. headquarters in New York said, but Washington wants it done as soon as possible.