US drone strike in Somalia killed al-Shabaab ‘chief bomb-maker’

Explosives expert behind “many deaths” among three men killed in missile attack on four-wheel-drive

A US drone strike in Somalia killed three senior al-Shabaab commanders including an explosives expert who had “a major role in the death of many innocent civilians”, officials said on Tuesday.

The missile attack targeted a Suzuki four-wheel-drive as it made its way along a road leading from a town wh ere US special forces mounted a failed night-time assault earlier this month.

Among those killed in Monday’s strike was Ibrahim Ali Abdi, the head of al-Shabaab’s bomb-making division, who planned the group’s suicide missions and directed the preparation of attackers’ vests, road-side explosives and car bombs.

He was among the most senior members of al-Shabaab, and was thought to be responsible for strikes inside Somalia against government officials and the African Union peacekeepers.

The fact that President Barack Obama authorised the mission to kill him signalled that Washington would now go after operatives even if they had not directly targeted American interests.

Abdikarin Hussein Guled, Somalia’s interior minister, said his intelligence services had been tracking Abdi, also known as Anta-Anta, for some time before the US drone mission took place.

“The operation in which this man has been killed was very important for the government,” Mr Guled said.

“This man had a major role in the death of many innocent civilians and his death will help in bringing back peace.”

The other two men in the four-wheel-drive were named as Abdikarim Kibi-Kibi and Warsame Baalle, deputy commanders of two al-Shabaab units controlling large areas of southern Somalia.

The drone strike came a little over a month after a suspected al-Shabaab cell killed 67 people during a four-day siege of the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, the capital of neighbouring Kenya.

The three commanders were understood recently to have been in Barawe, a coastal town that is al-Shabaab’s new stronghold and which was the target of a US Navy Seals raid earlier in October.

The Seals were on a mission to arrest Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, also known as Ikrima, another senior al-Shabaab commander. Ikrima escaped.

Source: The Telegraph