The UN Security Council was, meanwhile, due to discuss the deployment of African peacekeepers to back the weak government that with Ethiopian troops ousted Islamists from Mogadishu two weeks ago after heavy fighting.

In the capital, senior Somali officials said US aircraft staged new raids, a day after Washington confirmed Monday's air strike aimed at senior Al-Qaeda operatives believed hiding there.

"There were more air strikes by the United States and they shall continue until terrorists are eliminated from that part of Somalia," Somali Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aidid told AFP.

A second top Somali official said areas "suspected of being hideouts for the Islamists and their foreign fighters" were hit, although a Pentagon official in Washington denied knowledge of any new strikes.

"I'm only aware of the one attack," a US official familiar with the Somalia operation told AFP in Washington.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said eight "terrorists" were killed and five wounded and captured in a US airstrike.

Meles urged United States "not to expand the scope of their action in Somalia. Let our troops on the ground deal with the situation."

The second Somali official said villages in Badade and Afmadow districts near the Kenyan border were hit twice "in several locations," attacks confirmed by local clan elders by radio.

However, Somali Information Minister Ali Jama said he was only aware of air operations by Ethiopian forces who last month spearheaded the Somali government's offensive against Islamists.

It was not clear whether those hit included the main targets: Al-Qaeda operatives blamed for 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Somali elders said at least 19 people had died in the first US attacks but Somali and US officials both refused to confirm reports that suspected embassy bombing mastermind Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was killed.

Kenyan police said the wife of Fazul was arrested in the coastal town of Kiunga while trying to flee from Somalia into the country. She was transfered to the capital Nairobi for questioning, they said.

In Washington, two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the identities of those killed were still unconfirmed, with one saying "I don't have anything to support that," when asked about Fazul.

Fazul -- a Comoran wanted for the embassy bombings that killed 224 people, mostly African -- is among several Al-Qaeda members believed to be seeking refuge with Islamists in Somalia.

Others include Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan accused in the embassy attacks, and Abu Taha al-Sudani, a Sudanese alleged to be an explosives expert close to Osama bin Laden and whom the Somali government claimed led Islamist fighters in recent battles.

Iran condemned the strike as a violation of international law, the United Nations condemned action that could worsen conflict in the Horn of Africa and the African Union urged restraint.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warned against the "new dimension this kind of action could introduce to the conflict".

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and European Commission Vice President Franco Frattini on Wednesday backed the US campaign against Al-Qaeda in Somalia, after the EU executive condemned the air strikes.

Monday's raid was the first known US military strike in Somalia since the withdrawal of US forces there in 1994, and followed the rout of Islamist forces from the capital by joint Ethiopian-Somali forces.

Unidentified gunmen opened fire on an Ethiopian military vehicle in southern Mogadishu on Wednesday but missed and killed a female bystander, a day after three other people were killed in near-similar incidents, witness said.

Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

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