http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/09/04/u-s-confirms-air-strike-targeted-shabab-leader-somalia/
Thursday, September 4th, 2014 | Posted by WorldTribune.com
U.S. confirms air strike took aim at Shabab leader in Somalia
Special to WorldTribune.com
WASHINGTON — The United States has targeted the commander of Al Qaida’s
Shabab movement in Somalia.
Officials said the U.S. intelligence community tracked Shabab chief Ahmed
Abdul Mohammed to a camp south of the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
The officials said the U.S. military conducted an air strike on the camp on
Sept. 1 but did not confirm whether Mohammed was in the facility.
“We certainly believe that we hit what we were aiming at,” Defense
Department spokesman John Kirby said. “And based on intelligence that, as I
said, we believe was actionable — in other words, strong enough — we took
this strike.”
Shabab has been regarded as a leading Al Qaida franchise in East Africa.
Officials said Mohammed, also known as Ahmed Godane, was responsible for
numerous attacks, including one on a mall in Nairobi, Kenya in which 70
people were killed in 2013.
“They’ve also continued to plan plots targeting Westerners, including U.S.
personnel in East Africa,” Kirby said on Sept. 2. “In recent months, Al
Shabab claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Djibouti that killed
a Turkish national and wounded several Western soldiers, as well as a car
bomb at the Mogadishu Airport that targeted and killed members of the
United Nations convoy.”
Officials said both manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles struck the
Shabab camp. They said the aircraft fired AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground
missiles as well as unspecified munitions.
The Pentagon did not cite the launching point of the U.S. aircraft. The
U.S. military maintains a major facility in Djibouti, meant to cover the
Horn of Africa.
Over the last two years, the U.S. military conducted several attacks on
suspected Shabab leaders in Somalia. In most the cases, officials later
acknowledged that the leaders either escaped or were not in the targeted
facilities.
“This was a very significant blow to their network, to their organization
and, we believe, to their ability to continue to conduct terrorist
attacks,” Kirby said.
Received on Fri Sep 05 2014 - 08:27:58 EDT