(Nairobi) A senior commander of the Somali Islamist group Shebab, considered responsible for a 2020 attack on a US-Kenyan military base in eastern Kenya, has been killed, the Somali minister of defense announced. Information.
The United States had placed a reward of $10 million for the capture of Maalim Ayman, leader of a unit of this Islamist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, which has led a bloody insurgency against the Somali government since 2007.
“It is confirmed that Maalim Ayman, a senior Shebab leader, was killed during a joint operation by the Somali National Army with the assistance of US forces on December 17,” the Minister of Information announced on Thursday, of Culture and Tourism, Daud Aweis, on X.
“Ayman was responsible for planning several deadly terrorist attacks in Somalia and neighboring countries,” he added.
The US Army Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement on Tuesday that it had killed “a Shebab militant” in an airstrike carried out “in coordination with the federal government of Somalia” on December 17 near Jilib, in southern Somalia, without further details.
According to Washington, Maalim Ayman is the commander of a Shebab unit named Jaysh Ayman and the instigator of an attack carried out on January 5, 2020 against a US-Kenyan military base known as Camp Simba, in Manda Bay, near the tourist island of Lamu in eastern Kenya, not far from the border with Somalia.
Three Americans were killed, as well as four members of the Shebab commando.
According to a study conducted last year by George Washington University, the Jaysh Ayman unit was created by Shebab to infiltrate Kenya.
It is notably at the origin of attacks regularly carried out in the north-east of Kenya.
Shebab has been fighting the Somali federal government, supported by the international community, for more than 16 years. They have been considered a terrorist group by Washington since 2008.
Driven out of the main cities in 2011-2012, they remain established in vast rural areas of the center and south of the country, from where they regularly carry out attacks against security, political and civilian targets.
The government of President Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud launched a vast offensive last August, supported by the American army and the African Union force present in the country (ATMIS), which, after allowing the reconquest of territories in the center of the country, is currently at a standstill.