Posted on 04/30/2008 11:45:39 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
A Somali Islamist commander thought to be al Qaeda's leader in Mogadishu was killed in an air strike in central Somalia early on Thursday, an Islamist commander and residents said.
Residents in the town of Dusamareb said they believed two missiles were fired in what they said was a U.S. air strike.
"Infidel planes bombed Dusamareb. Two of our important people, including Aden Hashi Ayro, were killed in the incident," Mukhtar Robow Adumansur, a senior commander for the Islamist movement, told Reuters.
The leaders belonged to al Shabaab, the military wing of a sharia courts movement ousted at the end of 2006, that is on a U.S. list of terrorist organizations. The United States says Shabaab is linked to al Qaeda.
One resident said five Islamist fighters and a house maid were killed in the attack.
"An American plane bombed the house of al Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayro," one resident told Reuters.
"I could see pieces of human bodies lying outside the house. It was difficult to go in because of heavily armed Islamists guarding the area."
Another resident said the town was woken up by two loud explosions at about 2 a.m.
"When we came out, we saw a home in the neighborhood entirely destroyed by two missiles fired by planes flying over us. We counted four planes," said Amina Warsame, a resident of the town that is in central Somalia.
Security and intelligence sources say Ayro trained in insurgency tactics in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.
al Shabaab kabob
More Somali Islamists earn their virgins.
Kill him too. And if the al-Reuters stenographer is bagged at the same time, so much the better.
. -ccm
Music to my ears.
Who was the other important leader killed?
I haven’t seen a name. One of the stories mentioned that Ayro’s brother was killed. He could have been the second leader.
FACTBOX-Key facts about dead Somali al Qaeda commander
01 May 2008 08:02:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
May 1 (Reuters) - Below are key facts about Aden Hashi Ayro, thought to have been al Qaeda’s top leader in Somalia, who was killed in a U.S. air strike on Thursday.
* Ayro headed the Shabaab, the feared military wing of the Somali Islamist administration ousted from power in 2006 which had been waging an insurgency against government forces.
* Trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, Ayro came to attention when he was linked to the murders of four aid workers in Somaliland and more than a dozen Somalis with Western ties.
* The United States accused him of links to al Qaeda, through his mentor Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who led the former Islamist administration. Aweys always denied ties to al Qaeda.
* Ayro drew international condemnation for digging up a colonial-era Italian cemetery in Mogadishu in January 2005. He built a mosque there and intelligence experts said he also had a training camp for militants there.
* Security experts and diplomats say Ayro’s help to al Qaeda includes providing safe haven, weapons and housing to its members.
* Among those he is said to have assisted is Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese national thought to be al Qaeda’s east African chief and accused by Washington of directing an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in 2002.
* U.S. military officials say they believe Ayro was wounded in an air strike in January 2007.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/WAL128462.htm
Ordinarily this sentence wouldn't make me smile ... in this case though, I've made an exception.
Here today, gone Somali!
"Ten other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead."
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