U.S. attacks al Qaeda allies in Somalia

(CNN) -- A U.S. attack on a house in central Somalia killed at least 10 people, including the military leader of an Islamic militant group with close ties to al Qaeda, sources in the town said.


This photo of Adan Hashi Ayrow was posted Thursday on a Web site that supports Somali insurgents.

The strike targeted Adan Hashi Ayrow, the military commander of Al-Shabab, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, a U.S. official and a spokesman for the group said.

Although U.S. officials were assessing whether Ayrow was killed, Al-Shabab spokesman Mukhtar Robow said Ayrow was killed in the strike along with Sheikh Muhudiin Moalin Omar, a high-ranking member of the militia.

Clearly angry about the 3 a.m. strike on the town of Dhusomareb, town elder Elmi Arap told CNN that the house was demolished. He said 10 bodies had been counted, but the death toll could be higher because body parts were strewn about the rubble.

Robow said it was an airstrike but a U.S. official said it was a missile launched from either a Navy submarine or a ship.

Another U.S. official said the U.S. had been monitoring Ayrow for some time. Ayrow, who is believed to have fought against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, survived a U.S. airstrike in January 2007.

The officials did not wish to be named because the Bush administration has not acknowledged the attack.

Robow held a telephone conference with journalists from an undisclosed location in Somalia.

The U.S. military has attacked several Islamic militants in the last few years in Somalia, including a strike in early March against a man thought to be an al Qaeda associate.

In March, the U.S. State Department declared Al-Shabab a foreign terrorist organization.

"Al-Shabab is a violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with al Qaeda," the State Department Web site states. "Many of its senior leaders are believed to have trained and fought with al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

Al-Shabab is a splinter group of the Islamic Courts Union, which seized control of Somalia and its capital, Mogadishu, two years ago before being routed in Ethiopia's December 2006 invasion.

Al-Shabab fighters are waging fierce battles again across Somalia, seizing control of some small towns and battling to take back Mogadishu from the struggling Somalian government.

The United States accuses the Islamic Courts Union of harboring al Qaeda figures, including the suspects in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The Islamists deny the allegations.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and sparked brutal clan infighting.

Somalia's transitional government is trying to maintain control of the capital, with the help of the better-equipped Ethiopian forces.

But the presence of the Ethiopians has united various Islamic militant groups in trying to oust them and gain control of Mogadishu

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/05/01/somalia.airstrike/index.html