May 02, 2008	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 25, 1429

MOGADISHU, May 1: US warplanes killed a militant said to be Al Qaeda’s leader in Somalia and 30 other people on Thursday in Washington’s biggest blow to a resistance campaign raging since 2007.

The militants said Aden Hashi Ayro – who led ‘Al Shabaab’ fighters blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies – died in the first major success for a string of US air-strikes on Somali insurgents in the past one 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 US Central Command confirmed it was behind the attack.

“We’re committed to the global war on terror and the pursuit of terrorists wherever they operate,” Lt-Col Cheryl Law said.

One local elder said 30 bodies had been recovered from the ruins.

Ayro was a key figure masterminding the Iraq-style campaign against the allied Somali-Ethiopian troops.

The violence has 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.

“His elimination is very important,” said M.J. Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security think-tank in London.

“(But) the penetration by Al Qaeda in Somalia is so great that he will be replaced. This is a setback (for the militants), and it will be felt, but it’s not a mortal blow.”

Dusamareb residents said several other Shabaab fighters and civilians were killed in the pre-dawn air-strike on the dusty and rocky town. One resident said the stone house that was targeted had been flattened.

Counting Skulls

“Bits of human flesh are scattered on the ruins of the building,” witness Farah Hussein told Reuters. “People are counting the skulls to know the exact figure.”

Another local said residents were woken at 2am (2300 GMT on Wednesday) by two huge blasts and counted four planes overhead.

Local broadcaster Shabelle said they were US AC-130 gunships.

Robow said Ayro had trained many men: “We know our enemy is happy today, but our work will continue.”

Security and intelligence sources say Ayro, in hiding since a US air-strike in January 2007, trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

He was one of six members or associates of Al Qaeda thought by the United States to be in Somalia.

“He would have been a very dangerous figure to contend with, not just in Somalia itself but for neighbouring countries too,” security analyst Gohel said.

Al Shabaab is the armed wing of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council that took over most of southern Somalia for six months in 2006, until the allied forces routed it in a two-week war.

—Reuters