REUTERS
Omar Hammami addresses al-Shabaab fighters in a farm within Afgoye district near Somalia's capital Mogadishu in 2011.
Mogadishu - A
prominent US-born Islamist militant was killed in Somalia on Thursday
after he fell out with senior commanders of the al Shabaab rebel group,
witnesses said.
Residents in al Baate village in
southern Somalia said Alabama-born Omar Hammami, commonly known as Abu
Mansoor al-Amriki or 'the American', and a British national known as
Usama al-Britani were shot dead in a dawn raid on their hideout.
Hammami's killing exposed widening
rifts in al Shabaab's top ranks as the group affiliated to al-Qaeda
grapples with an African Union-led military offensive that has captured
key cities from the militants, depriving them of revenues.
“This morning al-Amriki and his
comrades were attacked by well armed fighters,” said village resident
Hussein Nur. “After a brief fight al-Amriki and his two colleagues were
killed. Several of their guards escaped.”
A second villager confirmed the
gun battle and said he had heard al Shabaab fighters confirm the deaths,
though he had not seen the bodies.
“No-one is allowed to go near the
scene,” the shopkeeper told Reuters by telephone from the village that
is under militant control.
Hammami
is believed to have arrived in Somalia aged 22 in late 2006, shortly
before a US-backed Ethiopian military incursion into the war-shattered
Horn of Africa country to rout an Islamist administration that had
dislodged the government.
Fluent in Somali, Hammami swiftly
became an influential leader of al Shabaab's foreign jihadists fighting
to topple a government seen as a Western puppet and impose a strict
interpretation of sharia law on Somalia.
Al Shabaab announced a formal
alliance with al-Qaeda in February 2012. Hammami was added to the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted Terror list in November
that year and a $5 million bounty was offered for information leading to
his capture. - Reuters
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