Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2009597/posts
U.S. air strike kills al Qaeda boss in Somalia
Yahoo News ^ | 5/01/08
Posted on May 1, 2008 4:23:21 AM PDT by Dawnsblood
U.S. war planes killed an Islamist rebel said to be al Qaeda’s leader in Somalia and at least a dozen other people on Thursday in Washington’s biggest blow against an insurgency raging since 2007.
The rebels said Aden Hashi Ayro — who led al Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies — died in the first major success for a string of U.S. air-strikes on Somali insurgents in the last year.
“Infidel planes bombed Dusamareb,” Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters by phone, referring to a town in central Somalia, where body parts lay strewn round a wrecked house.
“Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed.”
The death of the Afghanistan-trained militant is likely to bolster the Western-backed Somali government’s efforts to stem a rebellion that has gained ground in recent months. But it is sure to enrage Ayro’s fellow fighters, who say they are waging a jihad to eject Ethiopian troops.
Ayro was a key figure on the ground masterminding the Islamists’ Iraq-style insurgency against allied Somali-Ethiopian troops. The violence had intensified in recent weeks, with scores of deaths in Mogadishu and a series of hit-and-run raids by the Islamists on towns outside the capital.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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