Somalia: al-Shabab Leader Killed in US Drone Strike
by VOA News February 04, 2015
Somalia says a U.S. drone strike on Saturday killed its target, senior al-Shabab militant leader Yusuf Dheeg.
The government said in a statement Wednesday that Dheeg died with other al-Shabab commanders in the airstrike in the southern town of Dinsor.
A source in the militant group confirmed Dheeg's death to VOA's Somali Service.
The Somali government says Dheeg, who was al-Shabab's chief of external operations, 'was responsible for planning attacks inside and outside Somalia and was the brain behind the attacks.'
It says he planned explosions and suicide missions, and was a 'central figure' within al-Shabab.
Al-Shabab's attacks outside Somalia include the 2013 assault on Nairobi's Westgate mall, in which more than 60 civilians died, and a 2010 bombing in Uganda's capital, Kampala, that killed more than 70.
The U.S. has targeted the al-Shabab leadership in a series of airstrikes. In late December, the Defense Department confirmed that a U.S. strike killed the group's intelligence chief Tahil Abdishakur.
Al-Shabab's supreme leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was killed in a U.S. airstrike on September 1.
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