TerrorismU.S. strike kills al-Shabab’s spiritual leader

The U.S. military has attacked the Islamic al-Shabab network in Somalia yesterday (Monday). The Pentagon said the operation targeted the group’s fugitive leader.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said the United States was now assessing the results of the operation and would provide more information later.

A senior Somali intelligence official told the Guardian that a U.S. drone targeted al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane as he left a meeting of the group’s top leaders. Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, is the group’s spiritual leader who forged an alliance between Somali militants and al-Qaeda.

The Somali official said intelligence indicated Godane “might have been killed along with other militants.”

The official said the attack took place in a forest near Sablale district, 105 miles south of Mogadishu, where al-Shabaab trains its fighters.

The governor of Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region, Abdiqadir Mohamed Nor, told the AP that as government and African Union forces were heading to a town in Sablale district they heard what sounded like an earthquake as drones struck al-Shabab bases.

“There was an air strike near Sablale. We saw something,” Nor said.

The New York Times reports that the United States has carried out several air strikes in Somalia recent years, targeting senior al-Shabab leaders. A U.S. 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 strike that killed al-Shabab’s top explosives expert.

The latest United States acted yesterday after Somalia’s government forces regained control of Mogadishu’s Godka Jilacow prison, a high-security prison in the capital. The prison was attacked earlier on Sunday by heavily armed Islamic militants in an effort to free al-Shabab members held there.

Somali officials said all seven attackers, three government soldiers and two civilians were

Sunday’s attack on the prison started when a suicide car bomber detonated a truck filled with explosives at the gate of the prison, followed by gunmen who fought their way into the prison.

Al-Shabab militants were behind last September attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, which killed sixty-seven people. Godane said at the time that the attack, and other al-Shabab attacks inside Kenya, were in retaliation for the Kenya’s military incursions into Somalia to fight al-Shabab.

In 2011, the 22,000-strong African Union military force has evicted al-Shabab from most of Somalia’s towns, and the group is now active e mostly in the country’s rural areas.

The Somali military last week launched a broad military operation to oust al-Shabab from its last remaining bases in the southern parts of Somalia.

About 100 U.S. Navy SEALs and other Special Operation forces have been operating in different parts of Somalia for more than a year now.