Navy cruise missiles kill Somali al-Qaida leader

NAIROBI, Kenya — A top insurgent leader in Somalia whom U.S. officials have accused of having ties to al-Qaida was killed in a U.S. attack early Thursday, according to the Islamist group he led.

The strike in Dusa Marreb in central Somalia leveled a house belonging to the reclusive leader, Aden Hashi Ayro, who was inside at the time with at least one of his top commanders, his followers said.

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command confirmed that the United States had attacked “a known al-Qaida operative and militia leader” in the vicinity of Dusa Marreb.

A U.S. military official said five Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched against the village from a U.S. Navy warship. The official would not confirm the vessel or its home port but said ships from the Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, “routinely operate in the Horn of Africa area.”

Supporters of Ayro issued a statement calling him a “martyr.”

Few Somalis had heard of him before 2005, when Ayro desecrated a colonial Italian cemetery in Mogadishu, throwing hundreds of exhumed corpses into the sea. He then built a mosque on the site and began training fighters there — many of whom would be eager to take his place.

An International Crisis Group report linked Ayro to the murders of four foreign aid workers, a British journalist and a Somali peace activist.

After U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops ousted the Islamic movement in December 2006, he was blamed for introducing suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices and other al-Qaida style tactics to the insurgency that has gripped Somalia ever since.

U.S. officials alleged Ayro helped shelter the three al-Qaida operatives involved in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

U.S. counterterrorism officials say they think Africa is a priority for al-Qaida. In a series of pronouncements over the past year, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, have called for Islamist extremists to travel to Somalia.