Garowe Online (Garowe)
1 May 2008
Garowe — The leader of Somalia's al Shabaab insurgent group was the target of a U.S. airstrike early Thursday morning in the central Somali town of Dhusamareb, reliable sources said.
Adan Hashi Ayro, a fighter said to be in his 30s and spearheading the Somali insurgency, was confirmed to be inside a house in Dhusamareb, which was hit by at least three missiles.
Residents reported witnessing four military aircraft hovering above the town, followed subsequently by the sound of explosions at around 3am local time.
It could not be independently confirmed that Ayro was killed in the attack, but the BBC Somali Service cited witnesses saying they saw four dead bodies and that the recovery effort is still underway.
Muktar Robow "Abu Mansur," the al Shabaab spokesman, told Reuters that Ayro was killed inside a Dhusomareb home when "infidel planes" bombed the town.
There is no available picture of Ayro, who was allegedly trained in Afghanistan before the U.S. military invasion of 2001 that overthrew the country's Taliban rulers.
The U.S. military has targeted al Shabaab insurgents, and Ayro in particular, at least two times in southern Somalia last year but missed.
In March, the U.S. State Department officially designated al Shabaab a foreign terrorist group, a move the al Shabaab spokesman said he welcomed.
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