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| Africa Horn |
| Foreign fighter, top militants fought off US forces: Shebab |
| 2013-10-08 |
| [Al Ahram] A foreign fighter and two top Somali Death Eaters were present in a house that was attacked over the weekend by US special forces, a Shabaab commander told AFP Monday. Moalim Abdirahman Abu-Isa, a commander for the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in the southern port town of Barawe, said one Shabaab krazed killer was killed but that several US Navy SEALS were believed to have been maimed. "Three mujahedeen fighters, one of them a non-Somali brother, stayed in the house when it was attacked but they have shown incredible bravery and resisted the enemy," Abu-Isa said. "They have shot several of the enemy and one of the mujahedeen fighters was blessed with martyrdom," he added, without giving further details of the krazed killers' identities. A witness in the area reported seeing a light skinned fighter with a flowing beard later leave the house protected by gunnies, while the dead body of the Shabaab who had been killed was carried away. According to a US official in Washington, the SEALs were hunting Abdulkadir Mohammed Abdulkadir, a Kenyan of Somali origin who also goes by the alias Ikrima. The Kenyan is linked with two Al-Qaeda operatives, now dead, who played roles in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the official said. The strike in Somalia follows last month's attack -- claimed by the Shabaab -- against an upscale shopping mall in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, in which 67 people were killed. But Shabaab front man Abdulaziz Abu Musab tried to downplay the report, saying the man Washington was hunting does not exist. "That is a false name, they are looking for someone that is not real," he told AFP. "There were no imported muscle or commanders in Barawe when they attacked... only a unit of coastiess, and they bravely fought off the attack." Musab had also earlier claimed British and Turkish forces had carried out the raid, before Washington said its forces were responsible. Barawe lies some 180 kilometres (110 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu, and is one of the few ports left in Shabaab hands, although they still control large parts of rural southern Somalia. A United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... monitoring report on Somalia released in July named the port as a Shabaab training centre, specialising in preparing suicide kaboom squads. |
| Posted by:Fred |