Somali rebels defiant after al Qaeda chief killed

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali Islamists vowed on Friday to fight on under new leadership after U.S. planes killed the man said to be al Qaeda's boss in the Horn of Africa nation.

Aden Hashi Ayro, who led al Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies, died on Thursday in the latest of a string of U.S. air strikes on Islamist insurgents in the last year.

"This is not a personal cause but a national one. It will go on whether people die or not. Somalis should continue the struggle against the Ethiopian colonization," senior Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a former mentor to the slain militant, told Reuters.

"Dying is an honor at the moment. He (Ayro) played his role and died honorably," Aweys added in a telephone interview from Eritrea, where he lives in exile.

Security and intelligence sources say Ayro, in hiding since early 2007, trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

He was one of six members or associates of al Qaeda thought by the United States to be in Somalia.

The Western-backed Somali government is trying to stem a rebellion that has been gaining ground, but the rebels said the death of Ayro would not deter them.

Aweys said Ayro's death and the recent killing of civilians by Ethiopian force had cast doubt over U.N.-sponsored peace talks hoped to start on May 10 in Djibouti between the Somalia government and opposition leaders.

"Talks need a conducive environment to go ahead," he said. "It's like the Ethiopians and the Americans are against talks. We must talk among ourselves but I don't think it's possible."

Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow was defiant.

"We are warning the enemies of God that we will stay on the same path like the departed ... the path of true jihad," he told local broadcaster Shabelle.

The pre-dawn U.S. strike on the small central town of Dusamareb flattened a stone house where Ayro had been staying and killed 30 other people, including Shabaab militiamen and civilians, witnesses said.

Shabaab is the armed wing of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council that took most of south Somalia for six months in 2006, until government troops backed by Ethiopian forces routed it.

RETALIATION?

Ayro was a leading figure in masterminding the rebels' Iraq-style insurgency, which has intensified in recent weeks with scores of deaths in Mogadishu and a series of hit-and-run raids by the Islamists on towns outside the capital.

Security analysts said the killing of Ayro was significant, but al Qaeda penetration of Somalia meant he would be easily replaced. "There are other leaders and so eliminating one will not end the insurgency," said Mark Schroeder, regional director for sub-Saharan Africa at risk analysis firm Stratfor.

Western security officials have long seen Somalia as a haven for militants. Warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, casting the country into chaos.

Some analysts feared Ayro's killing would trigger reprisal attacks against U.S. targets. But a diplomat, who declined to be named, said the Shabaab was unlikely to be able to act alone.

"The threat to U.S. interests in the region is possible. It's always been there, but it would take others with greater capability than Shabaab to put that into operation," he said.

Many Somalis fear Ayro's killing will inflame anti-foreign sentiment and swell the number of Shabaab recruits.

"More people who lost their brothers in the American air bombing will join the struggle," Dusamareb shopkeeper Farhan Aden told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Guled Mohamed and Katie Nguyen in Nairobi, Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Sami Aboudi)

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