US airstrike kills head of al-Qa'ida in East Africa

Steve Bloomfield [The Independent]

Narobi (May 2, 2008) The leader of Somalia's jihadist insurgent group, and the man believed to be the head of al-Qa'ida operations in East Africa, has been killed by an American airstrike.

Aden Hashi Ayro died early yesterday morning when up to four US aircraft bombed a house in the town of Dusamareb in central Somalia, according to a spokesman for al-Shabaab, whichi is the group blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies. Up to 30 other people may have also been killed.

"Our brother martyr Aden Hashi has received what he was looking for – death for the sake of Allah – at the hands of the United States," Sheik Muqtar Robow, of al-Shabaab, told the Associated Press.

The attack is thought to be America's first major military success in Somalia since they backed an Ethiopian invasion of the country in December 2006. That intervention drove out the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), an Islamist administration which had been controlling the capital, Mogadishu, and large areas of southern Somalia.

In the 15 months since the Ethiopian invasion, al-Shabaab, which acted as the military wing of the UIC, has transformed itself into a violent insurgent group. The organisation has used similar tactics to insurgents in Iraq, carrying out roadside and suicide bombings.

It has attacked a string of towns in southern and central Somalia and targeted African Union troops in Mogadishu. Ethiopian and Somali government troops have responded with force.

Human rights groups have accused all sides of committing war crimes. Amnesty International claimed last week that Ethiopian troops had killed 21 people inside a mosque. Ethiopia strongly denied those allegations.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee Mogadishu. At least 200,000 are now living under temporary plastic shelters along the road leading out of the capital. Aid workers describe it as the world's largest concentration of displaced people.

The UN's special representative to Somalia, Amadou Ould Abdullah, has been trying to get Somalia's weak interim government and opposition groups to talk. But al-Shabaab, under Ayro's leadership, has distanced itself from its former allies. The US, much to the dismay of diplomats, designated it a terrorist group last month. Critics argued it would only serve to strengthen the group and weaken the political opposition.