Dusamareb residents said several other Shabaab fighters and civilians were killed in the pre-dawn air strike on the dusty and rocky town in a largely pastoralist area.

Local broadcaster Shabelle said insurgent leaders had been meeting there and put the total death toll at 15.

“Bits of human flesh are scattered on the ruins of the building,” witness Farah Hussein told Reuters. “People are counting the skulls to know the exact figure.”

Another local said residents were woken at 2 a.m. by two huge blasts and counted four planes overhead. Shabelle said they were US AC-130 gunships.

Robow said Ayro had trained many men: “We know our enemy is happy today, but their work will continue.” 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 neighboring 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 surviving 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 US to be in Somalia.