MOGADISHU (Reuters) - U.S. war planes killed an Islamist rebel said to be al Qaeda's leader in Somalia and at least a dozen other people on Thursday in Washington's biggest success in efforts to contain an insurgency raging since 2007.
The rebels said Aden Hashi Ayro -- who led al Shabaabmilitants blamed for attacks on government troops and theirEthiopian allies -- died in the first big hit for a string ofU.S. air-strikes on Somali insurgents in the last year.
"Infidel planes bombed Dusamareb," Shabaab spokesmanMukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters by phone, referring to a town incentral Somalia, where body parts lay strewn round a wreckedhouse.
"Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed."
The death of the Afghanistan-trained militant is likely tobolster the Western-backed Somali government's efforts to stemthe insurgency that has been gaining ground in recent months.But it is sure to enrage Ayro's fellow militants, who say theyare fighting a jihad to eject Ethiopian troops.
Ayro was a key figure on the ground masterminding theIslamists' Iraq-style insurgency against the alliedSomali-Ethiopian troops. The insurgency had intensified inrecent weeks, with scores of deaths in Mogadishu and a seriesof hit-and-run raids by the Islamists in towns outside thecapital.
Dusamareb residents said several other Shabaab fighters andcivilians were killed in the pre-dawn air strike. Localbroadcaster Shabelle said insurgent leaders had been meetingthere and put the total death toll at 15.
"Bits of human flesh are scattered on the ruins of thebuilding," witness Farah Hussein told Reuters. "People arecounting the skulls to know the exact figure."
Amina Warsame, another local, said residents were woken ataround 2 a.m. (12 a.m. British time) by two huge blasts andcounted four planes overhead. Shabelle said they were U.S.AC-130 gunships.
Robow said Ayro had trained many men: "We know our enemy ishappy today, but their work will continue."
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Western security services have long seen lawless Somalia asa haven for militants. Warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed SiadBarre in 1991, casting the country into chaos.
Somalia-based al Qaeda operatives were suspected in twosuicide attacks in neighbouring Kenya that killed 224 people atthe U.S. embassy in 1998 and 15 at an Israeli-owned beach hotelin 2002.
Security and intelligence sources say Ayro, who has been inhiding since surviving a U.S. air strike in January 2007,trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.
He was one of six members or associates of al Qaeda thoughtby the United States to be in Somalia.
In late February, Washington officially listed the Shabaabas a terrorist organisation, saying it had close ties to Osamabin Laden's network.
The al Shabaab is the militant wing of the Somalia IslamicCourts Council that took over most of southern Somalia for thesecond half of 2006, until the government and Ethiopian forcesrouted it in a two-week war.
Under Ayro, the Shabaab adopted Iraq-style tactics,including assassinations and roadside bombs and claimed atleast one suicide bombing -- unheard of in Somalia's moderateSufi Islamic customs.
Western security officials and diplomats say it has alsobeen responsible for killing aid workers and journalists, thedesecration of an Italian colonial-era cemetery in 2005 andscores of attacks during the insurgency.
In rare taped comments released in November, Ayro orderedhis fighters to attack a small African Union peacekeeping forcebased in Mogadishu.
Civilians in the city have borne the brunt of fighting,which aid workers say has triggered Africa's worst humanitariancrisis. A local rights group says clashes in the capital killed6,500 residents last year alone.
(Writing by Daniel Wallis and Helen Nyambura-Mwaura;Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Sami Aboudi)
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