Al-Qaeda Chief Assassinated by Somali Government Forces

Al-Shabaab - Al-Qaeda Links

According to Somalia’s National Security Minister, Abdullahi Mohamed Ali, Somali government forces have killed a senior Jordanian al-Qaeda fighter. Amar Ibrahim was shot dead by forces loyal to the TFG. He was also a member of Al-Shabab a militant group linked with Al-Qaeda in the region. Amar Ibrahim was the replacement of a militant chief in the al-Qaeda hierarchy who was killed by the US in September. But the militant group Al-Shabab, is strenuously denying the claims.  But the Security Minister confirmed in a BBC interview that an al-Qaeda fighter had been killed, but did not name him and said the government would provide evidence later.  The country’s state run media said Ibrahim had replaced Kenyan-born terrorism suspect Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan as al-Qaeda’s man in Somalia.

Nabhan had been hunted for years  by US agents over attacks on a hotel and an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002, before killing him in a helicopter raid last September. The US long accused al-Shabab of being al-Qaeda’s proxy in the region, but al-Shabab had denied the links until last month when it released a statement promising to “combine” its local jihad with al-Qaeda’s global fight.

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