NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.S. attacks on Islamic extremists in Somalia are undermining attempts to find a peaceful solution for the troubled Horn of African nation, a Washington-based aid agency said Monday.

A shaky transitional government took over Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in the last days of 2006 with the help of Ethiopian troops, unseating an extremist Islamic movement that had reigned for six months over most of southern Somalia. Now remnants of the Islamic movement are waging an insurgency.

In the past year or so, the U.S. has targeted suspected terrorists using missile strikes and added the military wing of Somalia's Islamic movement to its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

"These military actions undermine the diplomatic push for political reconciliation and galvanize extremist elements, reinforcing the very threat that U.S. policy in the Horn of Africa is meant to address," Refugees International said in a report titled "Somalia: Proceed with Caution."

Its assessment came on the same day nearly 200 Islamic fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns seized a central Somali town and attacked a military convoy in a nearby village, residents said.

Heavy fighting in the Somali capital killed a