Somalia's Islamist rebels vowed to fight on under new leadership today after US warplanes killed an insurgent said to be al-Qaeda's commander in the country.
Aden Hashi Ayro, who led al-Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies, was killed yesterday in the latest of a string of US air strikes on insurgents in the last year.
Security and intelligence sources say Ayro, in hiding since a US air strike in January 2007, trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He was one of six members or associates of al-Qaeda thought by the United States to be in Somalia.
The Western-backed Somali government is trying to stem a rebellion that has been gaining ground but Shabaab said the death of Ayro would not deter them.
"Even if Ayro has been martyred, his beliefs live on. The men who he trained and consulted are still around," al-Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told local radio.
"We are warning the enemies of God that we will stay on the same path like the departed ... the path of true jihad."
The pre-dawn US strike on the small central town of Dusamareb flattened a stone house where Ayro had been staying and killed 30 other people, including Shabaab militiamen and civilians, witnesses said.
Ayro was a leading figure in masterminding the rebels' Iraq-style insurgency, which has intensified in recent weeks with scores of deaths in Mogadishu and a series of hit-and-run raids by the Islamists on towns outside the capital.