US kills al Qaeda leader in Somalia missile strike

NY Times:

Aden Hashi Ayro, one of Al Qaeda’s top agents in East Africa and the leader of the Islamist comeback in Somalia, was killed Thursday morning by an American airstrike, according to American and Somali officials.

Mr. Ayro was one of the most feared and notorious figures in Somalia, a short, wispy man believed to be in his 30s who had gone from lowly car washer to top terrorist suspect blamed for a string of atrocities, including ripping up an Italian graveyard, killing a female BBC journalist and planning suicide attacks all across Somalia.

He was a military commander for the Shebab, an Islamist militia which the American government recently classified as a terrorist group.

Somalia officials said his death could be a key turning point in defeating the Islamists, who have seized several towns in recent weeks, and in bringing peace to the country.

“This will definitely weaken the Shebab,” said Mohamed Aden, consul for Somalia’s embassy in Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya, who confirmed the developments. “This will help with reconciliation. You can’t imagine how many Somalis are saying, ‘Yes, this is the one.’ The reaction is so good.”

Maj. Sherri Reed, a spokeswoman for the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., confirmed that the military had attacked "a known Al Qaeda target" in the central Somalia town of Dhusamareb, but declined to give more details of the pre-dawn strike.

But an American military official in Washington, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation, said that at least four Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a Navy ship or submarine off the Somali coast had slammed into a small compound of single-story buildings in Dhusamareb. Human rights organizations have upbraided the American government for launching air strikes against terrorist suspects inside Somalia and killing civilians instead, which has happened several times in the past year. But this time the missiles seemed to find their mark.

Around 3 a.m. Thursday morning, four missiles slammed into a home in Dhusamareb, according to residents, Somali officials and a spokesman for the Shebab. The home was being used by Mr. Ayro and his top lieutenants as a hideout, Somali officials said. More than 10 people were killed, including Mr. Ayro, Mr. Ayro’s brother and several other high-ranking Shebab commanders.

“Infidel planes bombed Dhusamareb," Shabab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters. "Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed."

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Good riddance. Somalia is a combat zone in the war against al Qaeda and it gives you a good idea of al Qaeda's chaos strategy when it comes to taking over a country. It is similar to what al Qaeda in Iraq tried and what al Qaeda ally Taliban have tried in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It will be interesting to see if a decapitation strike will be more effective in Somalia than elsewhere. There is no question that decapitation strikes degrade the enemy's ability to pursue operations. That has been the case in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They are not necessarily terminal to those operations.