U.S. air strike kills al Qaeda boss in Somalia

[ms.nalia]

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - U.S. war planes killed an Islamist rebel said to be al Qaeda's leader in Somalia and as many as 30 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 been gaining ground. But it is sure to enrage Ayro's fellow fighters, who say they are waging a jihad to eject Ethiopian troops.

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

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.

"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."

cont'd
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/ ... 7720080501