Somalia Facing Biggest Battle

[Merlin]

US special forces helicopters killed him.

Key al Qaeda figure killed in U.S. raid in Somalia

14 Sept MOGADISHU (Reuters) - U.S. special forces in helicopters attacked a car in southern Somalia on Monday and killed one of east Africa's most wanted al Qaeda militants, Somali and U.S. sources said.

Kenyan-born Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, 28, was suspected of building the truck bomb that killed 15 people at a Kenyan hotel in 2002, as well as involvement in a simultaneous, but botched, missile launch at an Israeli airliner leaving Mombasa airport.

A senior Somali government source said the fugitive was in a car with other foreign insurgents from the al Shabaab rebel group when they were hit near Roobow village in Barawe District, some 250 km (150 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu.

Washington says al Shabaab is al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia.

A U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. special operations forces aboard two helicopters that flew from a U.S. Navy ship opened fired on the vehicle that they believed contained Nabhan.

The troops and took the body into custody, the official said and said they were confident the body was that of Nabhan. ....

[Merlin]

This successful strike had avoided civilian deaths. But the resulting death of Nabhan may push the al Shabab group to go global by getting more foreign militant to fight with them.

After deadly US raid, Somalia radicals calls for backup

The Al Shabab movement sought foreign reinforcement two days after the US killed a fighter believed to have forged ties with Al Qaeda.

16 Sept [CSMonitor] Somalia's radical Al Shabab movement called for "reinforcements" from abroad Wednesday, two days after a US commando raid killed six of its fighters, including a top Al Qaeda-linked terror suspect.

The call came as more details on the raid emerged from US sources, even as the US government has declined to publicly confirm the attack.

Those sources describe a patient wait to launch a targeted, lightning strike against Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, in order to avoid civilian casualties. And one says there's a sense of a "job well done" among US officials after the successful operation.

Mr. Nabhan was wanted by the US and Kenyan governments for his alleged involvement in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 250, and the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel that killed 15.

Reuters reported the appeal for foreign help by a top commander of Al Shabab, a radical insurgent group that now controls perhaps a third of Somalia's war-torn territory.

"We call for all Muslim fighters in the world to come to Somalia," Sheikh Mahad Abdikarim, commander of al Shabaab forces in Bay and Bakol regions, told a news conference in Baidoa town. ...

The Los Angeles Times quoted anonymous US officials saying that both Americans and Somalians were "better off" without Nabhan, and that the strike was specifically planned to avoid civilian deaths.

A U.S. official familiar with details of the raid said the special operations forces had tracked Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan for some time, but waited for him to move away from a populated area before attacking. ....

Officials told the Times that Ali Nabhan had a "low key" role in Al Shabab, but was thought to have been instrumental in forging closer ties between the group and Al Qaeda. The attack could actually strengthen those ties, by pushing the group to go global.

In recent months, Shabab has been suffering from an internal dispute between those who want to keep the group's activities focused on Somalia and those trying to expand the group's mission to include foreign fighters and a global anti-Western agenda. ....