U.S. war planes killed an Islamist rebel said to be al Qaeda's leader in Somalia and as many as 30 other people on Thursday in Washington's biggest blow against an insurgency raging since 2007.
The rebels said Aden Hashi Ayro -- who led al Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies -- died in the first major success for a string of U.S. air-strikes on Somali insurgents in the last year.
"Infidel planes bombed Dusamareb," Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters by phone, referring to a town in central Somalia, where body parts lay strewn round a wrecked house.
"Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed."
The U.S. Central Command confirmed it was behind the attack.
"We're committed to the global war on terror and the pursuit of terrorists wherever they operate," the Central Command's Lt. Col. Cheryl Law said.
The death of the Afghanistan-trained militant is likely to bolster the Western-backed Somali government's efforts to stem a rebellion that has been gaining ground. But it is sure to enrage Ayro's fellow fighters, who say they are waging a jihad to eject Ethiopian troops.
One local elder said 30 bodies had been recovered from the ruins.
Ayro was a key figure masterminding the Islamists' Iraq-style insurgency against allied Somali-Ethiopian troops. The violence had intensified in recent weeks, with scores of deaths in Mogadishu and a series of hit-and-run raids by the Islamists on towns outside the capital.
"His elimination is very important," said M.J. Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security think-tank in London.
"(But) the penetration by al Qaeda in Somalia is so great that he will be replaced. This is a setback (for the militants), and it will be felt, but it's not a mortal blow."
Dusamareb residents said several other Shabaab fighters and civilians were killed in the pre-dawn air strike on the dusty and rocky town. One resident said the stone house that was targeted had been completely flattened.
COUNTING SKULLS
"Bits of human flesh are scattered on the ruins of the building," witness Farah Hussein told Reuters. "People are counting the skulls to know the exact figure."
Another local said residents were woken at 2 a.m. 2300 GMT Wednesday) by two huge blasts and counted four planes overhead. Local broadcaster Shabelle said they were U.S. AC-130 gunships.
Robow said Ayro had trained many men: "We know our enemy is happy today, but their work will continue."
Western security services have long seen lawless Somalia as a haven for militants. Warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, casting the country into chaos.
Somalia-based al Qaeda operatives were suspected in two suicide attacks in Kenya that killed 224 people at the U.S. embassy in 1998 and 15 at an Israeli-owned beach hotel in 2002.
Security and intelligence sources say Ayro, in hiding since a U.S. air strike in January 2007, trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He was one of six members or associates of al Qaeda thought by the United States to be in Somalia.
"He would have been a very dangerous figure to contend with, not just in Somalia itself but for neighboring countries too," security analyst Gohel told Reuters.
Ethiopia said it hoped Ayro's death would weaken his group.
Al Shabaab is the armed wing of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council that took over most of southern Somalia for six months in 2006, until the allied forces routed it in a two-week war.
Under Ayro, the Shabaab adopted Iraq-style tactics, including assassinations and roadside bombs and claimed at least one suicide bombing -- unheard of in Somalia's moderate Sufi Islamic customs.
Western security officials and diplomats say it has also been responsible for killing aid workers and journalists, the desecration of an Italian colonial-era cemetery in 2005 and scores of attacks during the insurgency.