U.S. airstrike kills 6; sights on terror chief

Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, gives a briefing Tuesday on the U.S. strike on al-Shabab militants Monday night in Somalia.
Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, gives a briefing Tuesday on the U.S. strike on al-Shabab militants Monday night in Somalia.

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A U.S. airstrike in Somalia killed at least six members of the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, a militant commander said Tuesday. The group's leader was said to be in a car that was hit, but it wasn't immediately known whether he was among the dead.

photo

AP

This photo taken Sunday and provided by the African Union Mission to Somalia shows Somalians returning to the town of Bulomarer after government troops ousted al-Shabab militants after hours of fighting.

The leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, has no heir apparent. If he was among those killed, his death would be a "significant blow" to al-Shabab's organization and abilities, said U.S. Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, who confirmed the strikes targeting Godane.

Al-Shabab, an offshoot of al-Qaida, was declared a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2008. The group has long operated in Somalia but gained international notoriety a year ago this month when it attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 67 people.

Godane was in one of two vehicles hit by the U.S. military strikes Monday night, said Abu Mohammed, an al-Shabab commander and spokesman. He said six militants were killed, but he would not say whether Godane was among them. The two vehicles were heading toward the coastal town of Barawe, al-Shabab's main base, Mohammed said.

The U.S. strikes hit after Godane left a meeting of the group's top leaders, a senior Somali intelligence official said. Intelligence indicated that Godane "might have been killed along with other militants," said the Somali official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The strikes on an encampment and a vehicle were conducted by special operations forces using manned and unmanned aircraft, Kirby said. They struck using several hellfire missiles and precision-guided munitions.

Defense officials said they believe the encampment and the vehicle were destroyed, but they were still trying to determine if Godane was killed.

"We certainly believe that we hit what we were aiming at," Kirby said during a news briefing. He said the United States would "continue to use all the tools at our disposal" to "dismantle al-Shabab and other terrorist groups."

One U.S. official in Nairobi said "we're 80 percent sure" Godane was killed in the strike. Still, militants in places like Yemen and Pakistan have been thought to be dead after drone strikes, only to resurface weeks or months later.

"There were no boots on the ground," added the U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

The attack took place 105 miles south of Mogadishu in a forested area where al-Shabab trains its fighters, said the governor of Somalia's Lower Shabelle region, Abdiqadir Mohamed Nor.

After Monday's airstrikes, masked Islamic militants in the area arrested dozens of residents who they suspected of spying for the U.S. and searched nearby homes, a resident said.

"Everyone is being detained," said Mohamed Ali, who lives in Sablale district. "They even searched nearby jungles and stopped the nomads transporting milk and grass to the towns for questioning."

Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, is al-Shabab's spiritual leader under whose direction the Somali militants forged an alliance with al-Qaida.

He is widely believed to have orchestrated countless attacks on civilians, including the massacre of dozens of shoppers at the Nairobi mall last year.

In 2012, the U.S. offered a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to his arrest.

If Godane has been killed, the leadership upheaval could cause al-Shabab to break away from al-Qaida and instead pledge allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group in Syria and Iraq, two security experts said.

Godane has no obvious successor, and there are reports of a rift within al-Shabab over which global terror group to align with, said Matt Bryden, the head of Sahan Research in Nairobi. A struggle for power seems likely, he said.

"Advanced splintering seems like a probable outcome," terrorism analyst J.M. Berger said. "If Shabab ends up exiting al-Qaida, there will be global implications for that ... but it's hard to say right now which way that will go."

Godane, 37, was publicly named as leader of al-Shabab in December 2007 and has since exercised command responsibility for the group's operations across Somalia. He is suspected to be responsible for the death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the leader of al-Qaida in East Africa, in June 2011, according to Stratfor Global Intelligence.

The killing was organized after Godane was alerted to a plan by al-Qaida to have Mohammed or other foreign fighters lead al-Shabab, Stratfor Global Intelligence said in March.

Last year Godane was said to be in a feud with foreign militants, including an American jihadist from Alabama, Omar Hammami, who accused al-Shabab leaders of funding extravagant lifestyles with taxes collected from Somali residents. Hammami was killed in September after months on the run after falling out with Godane.

The U.S. has carried out several airstrikes in Somalia in recent years. A missile strike in January killed a high-ranking intelligence officer for al-Shabab, and last October a vehicle carrying senior members of the group was hit in a U.S. attack that killed al-Shabab's top explosives expert.

The group has been operating mostly in rural areas of Somalia since being forced to withdraw from the capital, Mogadishu, in August 2011. Kenyan forces moved into Somalia two months later after accusing the militants of attacking tourists and aid workers.

The Kenyan forces now form part of an African Union-led force that has been deployed in Somalia since 2007 to try to help stabilize the country, which has been mired in conflict since the ouster of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Al-Shabab attacked the mall in Nairobi last year to punish Kenya and its international backers. Godane said at the time that the mall attack was carried out in retaliation for the West's support for Kenya's Somalia intervention and the "interest of their oil companies."

The latest U.S. action comes after Somalia's government forces regained control of a high-security prison in the capital.

Seven heavily armed suspected al-Shabab members attempted Sunday to free other extremists held there.

Somali military officials last week also began a military operation to oust al-Shabab from its last remaining bases in the southern parts of Somalia.

On Saturday the militants withdrew from the town of Bulomarer, about 70 miles south of Mogadishu, after hours of fighting.

African leaders meeting Monday in Nairobi said more action is needed to defeat the threat posed by al-Shabab and other insurgent groups in Africa. Governments on the continent have failed to take action that is "commensurate" with the threat posed by militant groups, said Idriss Deby, the African Union's Peace and Security Council's chairman.

Attacks by militants have left thousands of people dead across the continent. Boko Haram Islamist militants in Nigeria, the West African country that is Africa's biggest oil producer, killed more than 2,000 people in the first half of this year in their campaign to impose Islamic rule, according to activist group Human Rights Watch.

On the eastern side of the continent, at least 179 people have died in "terrorist incidents" in Kenya, according to Maplecroft, a U.K.-based risk consultancy. In northern Africa, Islamists have been battling for control of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Information for this article was contributed by Abdi Guled, Robert Burns and Jason Straziuso of The Associated Press; by Jeffrey Gettleman, Mohammad Ibrahim and Helene Cooper of The New York Times; and by Mohamed Sheikh Nor, David Malingha Doya, David Lerman and Ilya Gridneff of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 09/03/2014

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