US war planes killed an Islamist rebel supected of being al-Qaeda's leader in Somalia and as many as 30 other people today in Washington's biggest attack against an insurgency for more than a year.
The rebels said Aden Hashi Ayro - who led al Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies - died in the first major success for a string of US air-strikes on Somali insurgents in the last year.
"Infidel planes bombed Dusamareb," Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters by phone, referring to a town in central Somalia, where body parts lay strewn round a wrecked house.
"Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed." The United States confirmed it was behind the attack.
The death of the Afghanistan-trained militant is likely to bolster the Western-backed Somali government's efforts to stem a rebellion that has been gaining ground. But it is sure to enrage Ayro's fellow fighters, who say they are waging a jihad to eject Ethiopian troops.
One local elder said 30 bodies had been recovered from the ruins.
Ayro was a key figure masterminding the Islamists' Iraq-style insurgency against allied Somali-Ethiopian troops. The violence had 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.
"His elimination is very important," said MJ Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security think-tank in London.
"(But) the penetration by al-Qaeda in Somalia is so great that he will be replaced. This is a setback (for the militants), and it will be felt, but it's not a mortal blow."
Dusamareb residents said several other Shabaab fighters and civilians were killed in the pre-dawn air strike on the dusty and rocky town. One resident said the stone house that was targeted had been completely flattened.
"Bits of human flesh are scattered on the ruins of the building," witness Farah Hussein said. "People are counting the skulls to know the exact figure."
Another local said residents were woken at 2am (local time) by two huge blasts and counted four planes overhead.
Robow said Ayro had trained many men: "We know our enemy is happy today, but their work will continue."
The Pentagon said Central Command, part of the US military responsible for operations in the region, conducted the strike in Somalia against "a known al-Qaeda target", but would provide no details or say whether the strike was a success.
"We will pursue terrorists worldwide. The US is committed to identifying, locating, capturing and if necessary killing terrorists wherever they operate, train, plan their operations or seek safe haven," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
The US Defense Department has in the past said no US troops operate inside Somalia. But Mr Whitman today appeared to acknowledge the possibility that there are some.
Asked how many US troops are in Somalia, Mr Whitman said: "I honestly don't know and I don't know if I could answer that question or not."
Western security services have long seen lawless Somalia as a haven for militants. Warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, casting the country into chaos.
Somalia-based al-Qaeda operatives were suspected in two suicide attacks in Kenya that killed 224 people at the US embassy in 1998 and 15 at an Israeli-owned beach hotel in 2002.
Security and intelligence sources say Ayro, in hiding since a US air strike in January 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.