A US drone targeted the leader of the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab group in a strike in southern Somalia on Monday, a senior US defence official told Fox News.
Officially, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby would not confirm that the strike, the results of which are still being assessed, had been successful.
“We are assessing the results of the operation and will provide additional information as and when appropriate,” he said in a statement. There was no immediate comment from al-Shabaab.
A senior Somali official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also told The Associated Press that a US drone targeted al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane as he left a meeting of the group’s top leaders. The official told AP that intelligence indicated Godane “might have been killed along with other militants.”
Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, is the group’s spiritual leader under whose direction the Somali militants forged an alliance with al Qaeda.
The official said that the strike took place in a forest near Sablale district, 105 miles south of Mogadishu, where the group trains its fighters. The governor of Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region, Abdiqadir Mohamed Nor, told The Associated Press that as government and African Union forces were heading to a town in Sablale district, they heard something that sounded like an “earthquake” as drones struck al-Shabaab bases.
“There was an airstrike near Sablale, we saw something,” Nor said.
After the US strike Monday night, masked Islamic militants arrested dozens of residents suspected of spying for the US and searched nearby homes, a resident said.