By Stewart Bell, National Post April 7, 2009
A former Toronto man who had joined Somalia's fundamentalist insurgents was shot dead by Ethiopian troops after he was surrounded and refused to surrender, rebel sources said yesterday.
The sources, who did not want to be identified because they did not have permission to speak, confirmed that Canadian Abdullahi Ali Afrah was killed on Tuesday during an attack on Ethiopian troops.
An Ethiopian military convoy was returning from Gureil, near the Ethiopian border, when Mr. Afrah -- also known as Aspro or Asparo -- and about 100 other insurgents attacked, although they were soon surrounded.
While most of the rebels retreated, Mr. Afrah was part of a small group that continued to fight. As they ran out of ammunition, some of the rebels took their own lives but the sources said Mr. Afrah was shot by the Ethiopians.
Sixteen insurgents died in the gun battle. Twelve of them were members of Mr. Afrah's Duduble clan, including his cousin, Moalim Farhan, who was described as leader of the insurgency in central Somalia.
The sources described Mr. Afrah as an active member of the Shabab, which is a designated terrorist group in the United States and which serves as the militia of the Islamic Courts Union, a Taliban-like fundamentalist group.
Although based in Mogadishu, Mr. Afrah had gone north to reinforce the Shabab fighters, the sources said. They said his duties also included organizing and co-ordinating the Shabab's international fundraising efforts.
Mr. Afrah is a naturalized Canadian citizen who ran a money-transfer business in Toronto before returning to his homeland in the late 1990s. He is one of several Somali-Canadians who are believed to have left Toronto and Ottawa and joined Somalia's insurgents. Although Somali and Ethiopian officials have claimed to have killed several of the Canadians, Mr. Afrah is the first to be identified by name.
The Department of Foreign Affairs is still trying to verify media reports about the Canadian's death. Ottawa has no diplomatic presence in Somalia, one of the world's most dangerous countries. The closest Canadian mission is in Nairobi.
If the reports of Mr. Afrah's death are accurate, he would be the latest Canadian killed while fighting abroad for an armed Islamist group. Rudwan Khalil of Vancouver was killed by Russian security forces in Chechnya in 2004. In 2003, Ahmed Khadr was killed in a gunfight with Pakistani forces. Toronto's Hassan Farhat is believed to have died in Iraq.
Mr. Afrah was born in Mogadishu and moved to Canada in the 1980s. He worked as a carpenter and at a corner store before opening the Canadian branch office of Al-Barakaat, a money-transfer business whose Somali offices have been blacklisted for terrorist financing.
He returned to Mogadishu in the late 1990s and became second deputy chairman of the Shura Council of the Islamic Courts Union. With its Shabab militia, the ICU took control of the capital, Mogadishu, until it was repelled by Somali and Ethiopian government forces in late 2006. Since then, the insurgents have been waging an Iraqi-style guerrilla campaign.
A former Somali rebel told the National Post last year he had seen Mr. Afrah at a training camp in Mogadishu firing an AK-47, but his apparent death in a rebel assault is the first indication he was actively fighting with the Shabab.
Fighting between the Islamists and government forces has devastated the former Italian colony, which borders Kenya, Ethiopia and Somaliland in the Horn of Africa. Thousands of Somalis have been forced to flee.
The African Union has sent peacekeeping troops to Somalia.
On Tuesday, African leaders extended the mission for another six months but also urged the United Nations to take over the peacekeeping operation.
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