US war planes killed an Islamist rebel said to be Al Qaeda’s leader in Somalia and at least a dozen other people on Thursday in Washington’s biggest blow against an insurgency raging since 2007.

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 death of the Afghanistan-trained militant is likely to bolster the Western-backed Somali government’s efforts to stem a rebellion that has gained ground in recent months. But it is sure to enrage Ayro’s fellow fighters, who say they are waging a jihad to eject Ethiopian troops.

Ayro was a key figure on the ground 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 M.J. Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security thinktank in London.

“(But) the penetration by Al Qaeda in Somalia is so great that he will be replaced. This is a setback (to the militants), and it will be felt, but it’s not a mortal blow.”

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