Somali troops and US forces have killed a senior commander of the al-Shabaab militant group who had a $10m bounty on his head over an assault that left three People useless.
“Maalim Ayman, a senior chief of al-Shabaab, was confirmed to have been killed in a joint operation by the Somali nationwide military with help from US forces on December seventeenth,” Kenya’s info minister, Daud Aweis, stated on X on Thursday.
He stated Ayman was liable for “planning a number of deadly terrorist assaults in Somalia and close by nations”.
The al-Qaida-linked Islamists have led a 16-year insurgency towards the delicate central authorities and management swathes of rural Somalia.
Ayman, chief of the al-Shabaab unit Jaysh Ayman, was wished by the US over an assault on an airbase in Kenya in January 2020 by which three People died.
In January, the US state division stated Ayman deliberate the 2020 assault on the Manda Bay airfield on Kenya’s northern coast, providing a reward of as much as $10m (£8m) for info that would result in his seize.
Washington has labored intently with Mogadishu to counter al-Shabaab, which has come below stress from a Somali authorities offensive launched final yr with the backing of native clan militias in addition to air assist from the US and African Union forces.
However after making vital progress in recapturing territory, the offensive has stalled, elevating questions in regards to the authorities’s capability to battle the Islamists.
A examine final yr by George Washington College’s program on extremism stated that Jaysh Ayman was shaped by al-Shabaab in an effort to penetrate into Kenya. The unit, which has exercised rising autonomy, consists of foreigners, twin nationals and Kenyans of Somali and non-Somali descent, it stated.
An African Union power was deployed in Somalia in 2007 with a six-month mandate however nonetheless stays on the bottom.
