Region

SANAA — The Yemeni president on Tuesday dismissed the Cabinet including the prime minister who led it for two years, while partially reversing an earlier decision to lift fuel subsidies in a bid to end a stand-off with Shiite rebels holding anti-government protests across the country.

Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi made his decision during a meeting with the now outgoing government, representatives of political parties and parliament members, the official news agency SABA reported. The decisions came in response to an "initiative" submitted by a presidential committee formed by Hadi to examine peaceful resolutions for the Yemeni crisis.

"The nation is passing through tough times," the agency reported Hadi as saying during the meeting. "It is standing at a crossroads: Either walk the path of life, development and a new Yemen, or chaos, lawlessness and the unknown."

Hadi pledged to represent the interests of the Yemeni people as a whole and not privilege particular factions or groups. He said he would appoint a new prime minister within a week, after which political parties will nominate Cabinet ministers from their own ranks. Hadi will appoint defence, interior, finance and foreign ministers, SABA said.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel Salam said his group rejected the move and would continue to pressure the government. "We are not giving in... but we will also not shut the door to dialogue."

Faris Al Saqqaf, Hadi's political adviser, told The Associated Press the rebels, known as Houthis, had surprised him by reacting in what he described as a harsh and swift manner.

"It shows that the Houthis have other goals and are using the subsidies as a pretext to execute another agenda," he said. On Monday, Hadi alleged that there are "countries in the region that want to create chaos in Sanaa, and burn it like Damascus and Baghdad are burning now" — a thinly veiled reference to Iran, which he says supports Houthis.

Hadi's decision comes a day after Houthi rebel leader Abdel Malek Al Houthi escalated the confrontation with Hadi by calling for civil disobedience against the government. He also urged the expansion of mass protests that have disrupted life in the capital for over two weeks. The rebels had been demanding the government to step down and also reinstate fuel subsides.

Fuel prices nearly doubled after the subsidy cuts, but the reaction on the street was limited when it was announced in July. Opponents say the Houthis are using the issue as a cover and really just want to seize power.

The Houthis’ ability to mobilise tens of thousands in the capital and set up sit-ins near several ministries has put security authorities on alert.

A senior Yemeni security official said that Houthis are plotting a Ukrainian-style revolution in the capital and that they plan to storm the Cabinet and parliament over the coming days.

The conflict between Houthis and the government is rooted in enmity between the Shiite rebels and rival Sunni militias that are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood group, and its political arm, the Islah Party.

Houthis recently defeated the Islamists after months of battle in the north, where they eventually took over the city of Amran. Critics view their current push on the government as an extension of that victory — opportunism using the subsidies issue as a pretext.

The Islah Party is part of the government. Critics saw outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed Salem Bassindwa as weak and too close to the party. The change of the prime minister is the first since the election of Hadi in 2012.

The Houthis waged a six-year insurgency that officially ended in 2010. The following year, an Arab Spring-inspired uprising shook the country, eventually forcing longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down as part of a US-backed deal giving him immunity from prosecution.

Houthi said late Sunday a campaign of civil disobedience would begin Monday, "but it will not be about closing stores or groceries... it will be a different kind". He didn't elaborate.

"If our demands are not met there will be decisive measures that we will talk about in time," he said.

Yemen, one of the Arab world's poorest nations, is facing multiple challenges. In addition to Houthi rebels, an Al Qaeda branch in the south poses a constant threat as it tries to impose control over cities and towns.

On Tuesday, Al Qaeda militants shot three men dead in the southern province of Hadramawt, a security official said. Next to the bodies of the three men, he said, the militants left a statement describing them as "spies" for the United States who had been helping target Al Qaeda militants for US drone strikes.

"The spies sold their religion and themselves to the devil in return for money," the official quoted the statement as saying. "The Americans with their drones in the sky and those with their evil eyes on the ground," it added, warning others who cooperate with the US that they would "face the same destiny".

The US considers Yemen's local branch of Al Qaeda to be the world's most dangerous, and has helped support Yemeni government offensives against it with drone strikes.

UNITED NATIONS — The Palestinian leadership intends to seek a UN Security Council resolution setting a three year deadline for ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, a PLO official said Tuesday.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, acknowledged at a news conference that the United States would veto such a resolution.

Nevertheless, she told reporters: “We will be seeking a Security Council resolution on ending the occupation on a specific date.”

“We should know that the occupation will end within three years,” she added.

She raised the possibility of also seeking passage of a similar but non-binding resolution by the UN General Assembly.

Ashrawi once again also brandished a threat to take Israel before the International Criminal Court over its 50-day military offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

But she did not say when it might do so. The Palestinians were granted observer status at the court in 2012, giving them access to the court.

“We are intending to take Israel to the ICC. We do not have a timeframe, we have a programme of action,” she said.

Wasel Abu Yusef, a senior PLO official, said last week that the organisation was working to convene an international conference to set a timetable for ending the occupation.

But as yet, no Palestinian official has said when a formal proposal will be made to the Security Council.

BEIRUT — Al Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels holding 45 Fijian peacekeepers hostage have issued a set of demands for their release, including the extremist group's removal from a UN terrorist list and compensation for the killing of three of its fighters in a shootout with international troops, an official said Tuesday.

The Nusra Front seized the Fijians on Thursday in the Golan Heights, where a 1,200-strong UN force monitors the buffer zone between Syria and Israel. The rebels also surrounded two Filipino units, but those UN troops escaped over the weekend.

Speaking in the Fijian capital of Suva, military commander Brig. Gen. Mosese Tikoitoga said the Nusra Front has made three demands for the peacekeepers' release: to be taken off the UN terrorist list; the delivery of humanitarian aid to parts of the Syrian capital of Damascus; and payment for three of its fighters it says were killed in a shootout with UN officers.

Tikoitoga did not say whether the rebels' demands would be seriously considered. He said the UN had sent hostage negotiators to Syria to take over discussions from military leaders.

"Negotiations have moved up to another level with the professional negotiators now in place," he said.

Tikoitoga also released the names of the 45 detained soldiers, who he said are led by Captain Savenaca Siwatibau Rabuka. He asked Fiji's community and church leaders to help look after the families of the captive troops and asked the public to also offer support.

"I appeal to all Fijians that while we pray for our soldiers in Syria that we be sensitive to the families," he said, adding "the UN has assured us they will use all of their available resources for the safe return of our soldiers”.

Syrian rebels, including Nusra Front militants, seized a border crossing with Israel on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights on Wednesday. The area has been engulfed in heavy fighting between the opposition fighters and President Bashar Assad's forces since then.

In Manila, Philippines, military chief of staff Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang said the 40 Filipino peacekeepers who escaped had not accepted a rebel demand that they give up their firearms and surrender because that would have put the troops in grave danger.

Catapang said the rebel demands for the Fijians’ release showed their true nature.

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” he said. “We have machine guns and crew-served weapons so if we give them our weapons, this will help create an international problem.”

The Nusra Front, in a statement posted online Sunday, accused the UN of doing nothing to help the Syrian people since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. It said it seized the Fijians in retaliation for the UN ignoring “the daily shedding of the Muslims’ blood in Syria”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Finance Minister Yair Lapid warned Tuesday that Israel was eroding its international support, as criticism abroad mounted of its biggest grab of Palestinian land since the 1980s.

Lapid complained the Security Cabinet had not been consulted about Sunday's announcement of the confiscation of 400 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank to pave the way for further settlement building.

"The announcement, which wasn't brought to the Security Cabinet, regarding 900 acres of land for building in Gush Etzion [between Jerusalem and Hebron] harms the state of Israel," Lapid told an economic conference in Tel Aviv.

"Maintaining the support of the world was already challenging, so why was it so urgent to create another crisis with the United States and the world?" he asked.

Lapid, a centrist within the governing coalition, was alluding to widespread international condemnation of the high Palestinian civilian death toll during Israel’s 50-day war in Gaza.

However, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, himself a resident of Tekoa in the Gush Etzion settlement zone, defended the expropriation.

“The official policy of the government of Israel is first of all to focus on those settlement blocs which it is understood will under any agreement to come remain under Israeli sovereignty,” he said in remarks broadcast by public radio.

“I think that Gush Etzion expresses the broadest consensus in Israeli society and it is understood by everyone that in any agreement Gush Etzion will be part of the state of Israel.”

But Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, a Cabinet moderate who served as chief negotiator in abortive US-brokered talks with the Palestinians, slammed the landgrab.

“It weakens Israel and threatens its security,” she said.

On the other side, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, whose far-right Jewish Home Party draws much of its support from the settler lobby, defended the move as retaliation for the murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.

“It’s 120 years that the world has opposed our construction, and we’ll continue to do it,” he said, equating settlement building in the West Bank with construction in the years before Israel’s creation in 1948.

The European Union on Monday condemned the Israeli move.

“We condemn the new appropriation of land in the West Bank, relating to plans for further settlement expansion, announced by the Israeli government on Sunday,” it said in a statement distributed by EU missions in Tel Aviv and occupied east Jerusalem.

“At this delicate moment, any action that might undermine stability and the prospect of constructive negotiations following the ceasefire in Gaza should be avoided,” it said.

Strong US, UN criticism

The international community regards all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, as illegal, and Sunday’s announcement drew strong US and UN criticism.

“This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve, and construction tender they issue, is counterproductive to Israel’s stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians,” a US State Department official said.

“We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was “alarmed” by Israel’s plans, his spokesman said.

“The seizure of such a large swathe of land risks paving the way for further settlement activity, which — as the United Nations has reiterated on many occasions — is illegal under international law and runs totally counter to the pursuit of a two-state solution,” the spokesman said.

CAIRO — An attack on a convoy killed 11 members of the Egyptian security forces in the Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, security and medical sources said.

Two were killed by a roadside bomb and the others were shot as they tried to flee, the security sources said. Security sources said earlier that the attack killed 10 soldiers.

Militants in Sinai have stepped up attacks on policemen and soldiers since then-army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi toppled president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013.

Sisi was elected president three months ago and his government makes no distinction between the Brotherhood — which says it is a peaceful movement — and the Sinai militants.

The attacks initially targeted security forces in Sinai — a remote but strategic part of Egypt located between Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Suez Canal — but they have since extended their reach, with bombings on the mainland.

The violence has hurt tourism, a pillar of the economy.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb condemned Tuesday's attack and said Egypt would continue to confront terrorism. "The world has witnessed now what the hands of terrorism are doing in our country," he said in a statement. "Terrorism will not succeed in breaking the will of Egyptians."

The Sinai-based militant group Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis said in August it had beheaded four Egyptians, accusing them of providing Israel with intelligence for an air strike that killed three of its fighters.

Egyptian security forces have launched several offensives in Sinai in a bid to eliminate Ansar, widely regarded as the country's most dangerous militant group.

Chaos in Libya, meanwhile, has allowed militants to set up makeshift training camps only a few kilometres from Egypt's border, according to Egyptian security officials.

The militants, those officials say, harbour ambitions similar to Al Qaeda breakaway group, Islamic State, that has seized large swathes of Iraq; they want to topple Sisi and create a caliphate in Egypt.

In July, gunmen killed 21 Egyptian military border guards near the frontier with Libya, highlighting a growing threat from an area that security officials say has become a militant haven.

The Sinai insurgency has shown how even a small number of militants can mount a challenge to the Egyptian state. Ansar has killed hundreds of people and proved resilient in the face of army offensives, yet Sinai residents say its core amounts to only a few hundred militants.

Any alliance between Ansar and the militants near the Libyan border could pose big problems for Egypt, which is aching for stability after three years of unrest since the start of the Arab uprisings. Members of Ansar say contacts between the two groups have already been established.

Islamists and the Egyptian state are old enemies. Islamist-leaning army officers assassinated president Anwar Al Sadat in 1981, mainly because of his peace treaty with Israel; and former president Hosni Mubarak fought insurgents in the 1990s.

But the lightning seizure of large swathes of Iraq by Islamic State has added to the sense of urgency in combating militants along Egypt’s border with Libya and in the Sinai.

AMERLI, Iraq — Iraqi forces made more progress Tuesday in their fightback against jihadists, but in Baghdad anger boiled over as hundreds stormed parliament over the fate of missing soldiers who surrendered in June.

After breaking a months-long jihadist siege of the Shiite Turkmen town of Amerli by Islamic State (IS) fighters, troops on Tuesday regained control of part of a key highway linking Baghdad to the north.

Two towns north of Amerli were also taken from the jihadists on Monday as Iraqi forces — backed by US air strikes — score their first major victories since the army's collapse across much of the north in June.

That collapse left some 1,700 soldiers in jihadist hands, with many believed to have been executed.

Demanding to know their fates, angry relatives stormed parliament in Baghdad, attacked MPs and began a sit-in in its main chamber, an official said.

Anti-riot police were trying to evict the hundreds of protesters, who were also calling for some officers to be held accountable, said the official, who was present at parliament.

Concern over those in jihadist hands has been fuelled by reports of widespread atrocities, including accusations from Amnesty International of war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

The Sunni extremist IS declared an Islamic “caliphate” in regions under its control in Iraq and Syria after it swept through much of the Sunni Arab heartland north of Baghdad in June and then stormed minority Christian and Yazidi Kurdish areas.

IS has carried out beheadings, crucifixions and public stonings, and Amnesty on Tuesday accused it of “war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions” in areas it controls.

‘Wave of ethnic cleansing’

“The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq,” said its senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera.

The UN Human Rights Council unanimously agreed to send an emergency mission to Iraq to investigate IS atrocities, after a senior UN official said the jihadist group had carried out “acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale”.

Concern over the scale of the humanitarian crisis helped prompt limited US air strikes in support of Iraqi forces, Shiite militia and Kurdish troops battling the jihadists.

Such strikes were used in the area during the Amerli operation — the first time Washington has expanded its more than three-week air campaign against IS outside the north.

Desperate residents rushed to receive aid deliveries after Iraqi forces moved in to the town, scrambling to grab food and bottles of water from flatbed trucks.

A day after seizing Amerli, troops and Shiite militiamen on Monday retook Sulaiman Bek and Yankaja, two towns to its north that had been important militant strongholds.

Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir Al Zaidi said they had continued the advance on Tuesday, regaining control of a stretch of the main highway to the north which had been closed by the militants for almost three months.

A senior militia commander said it would be several days before the road reopened as sappers needed to clear it of mines and booby-traps planted by the retreating militants.

The United States said it launched four air strikes in the Amerli area, meaning that it effectively supported operations involving militia forces that previously fought against US troops in Iraq.

The government’s reliance on Shiite militiamen in this and other operations risks entrenching groups which themselves have a history of brutal sectarian killings.

David Petraeus, a former commander-in-chief of US-led forces in Iraq, has warned against America becoming an “air force for Shiite militias”.

But worries over the rise of IS seem to be outweighing other concerns, with Western leaders warning the group poses a security risk far outside the areas under its control.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Tuesday said that “extreme force” was justified against IS militants, describing them as worse than Nazis or Communists.

“As soon as they’ve done something gruesome and ghastly and unspeakable, they’re advertising it on the Internet for all to see which makes them, in my mind, nothing but a death cult,” Abbott said.

TUNIS — A secular Tunisian parliamentarian narrowly escaped assassination by six masked gunmen who surrounded his home late at night in a city near the Algerian border, the interior ministry said Tuesday.

The attack came less than two months before fiercely competitive parliamentary elections on October 26 that will mark the end of the democratic transition started when people overthrew Tunisia’s dictator in 2011.

Interior ministry spokesman, Mohammed Ali Aroui, said the attackers came down to the city of Kasserine from Mount Salloum, part of a chain of mountains along the Algerian border where Al Qaeda linked militants have hideouts. No arrests were reported, and it was unclear how authorities could identify where the attackers were based.

The parliament member, Mohammed Ali Nasri of the Nida Tounes Party, told local radio that he saw three masked, armed men pounding violently at his door late Monday night while three others stood guard in the street.

He said he fled to the second floor of his house and then leaped into a neighbour’s courtyard, breaking his leg in the fall. He said he heard shots before neighbours took him to the hospital.

In May, gunmen attacked the home of the interior minister in the same city, killing four policemen. The minister was not there, but his family was.

In 2013, two politicians of the left-wing Popular Front coalition were gunned down by assailants linked to Al Qaeda, plunging the country into a political crisis that ultimately led to the resignation of the Islamist-led government in favour of a caretaker administration.

Over the weekend, interior ministry Lotfi Ben Jeddou warned that there were serious terrorist attacks planned in Tunisia for September in an attempt to torpedo the elections.

The ministry has also confirmed that two other prominent politicians from the anti-Islamist camp have received death threats and had their security boosted.

Hamma Hammami, the head of the Popular Front coalition, was advised not to attend a scheduled rally because of threats.

Beji Caid Essebsi, the head of Nida Tounes and a front-runner in the upcoming election, was also threatened and has been given the use of an armoured car, the ministry said.

CAIRO — The Khartoum government has closed all Iranian cultural centres in Sudan and expelled the cultural attaché and other diplomats, fearing they had become a threat to society, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

The expulsions were linked to government concerns that Iranian officials were promoting their Shiite brand of Islam in the largely Sunni country.

The Iranian Cultural Centre and its branches had exceeded their mandates and "become a threat to intellectual and social security", the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Sudan, isolated by UN and Western sanctions partly linked to its conflict in Darfur, has sought allies and donors across the sectarian divides in the Middle East and further afield.

That has often left it balancing competing interests and loyalties in the complex web of regional rivalries.

Sudan President Omar Hassan Al Bashir came to power in 1989 in a bloodless coup backed by Sunni Islamists.

His country turned down an Iranian offer to set up air defences on its Red Sea coast after a 2012 air strike Khartoum blamed on Israel, fearing it would upset Tehran's regional rival, the Sunni superpower Saudi Arabia, Sudan's foreign minister said in May.

But Sudan, where many people follow the traditional Sufi tradition of Islam, has also received delegations from senior Iranian politicians.

Saudi Arabia, a regional ally of the United States, has been locked in a contest with non-Arab Shiite power Iran for influence in the Middle East.

The rivalry has effectively divided the region into two camps, with countries either allied to Saudi Arabia or to Iran.

A government source told Reuters the diplomats had been given 72 hours to leave.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia has arrested 88 suspected extremists, more than half of them ex-Al Qaeda detainees who had previously been released, the interior ministry announced on Tuesday.

The arrests come as part of the kingdom's drive to "punish" those "belonging to or supporting" groups classified as "terrorist", the ministry added in a statement on the official SPA news agency.

Saudi King Abdullah on Friday underscored the threat posed by jihadists unless there is "rapid" action.

The ministry said Tuesday that the suspects, arrested over past months across the kingdom, are all Saudis except for three Yemenis and one whose identity remains "unknown".

Fifty-nine of them were "previously arrested over their links to the deviant group", the name used by Saudi authorities.

The authorities launched a massive crackdown on Al Qaeda following a spate of deadly attacks in the kingdom from 2003-2006.

It released scores of militants after passing them through a controversial rehabilitation programme set up seven years ago to persuade jihadists that their actions violate the teachings of Islam.

But many graduates of the programme returned to militancy, including Saeed Al Shehri, who went on to become deputy leader of the deadly Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before being killed in a US drone strike in Yemen last year.

The ministry said the latest arrests had "foiled plots they were going to start implementing inside and outside" the country.

The interior ministry in March published a list of "terror" groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda's official Syrian affiliate, and the Islamic State, a notorious jihadist group fighting in Syria and Iraq.

It also includes the little-known Shiite group Saudi Hezbollah as well as Shiite Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen.

Saudi Arabia's top cleric last month branded Al Qaeda and IS jihadists as "enemy number one" of Islam.

And King Abdullah was quoted as saying: "Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East.

"If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month."

Saudi authorities set up specialised terrorism courts in 2011 to try dozens of Saudis and foreigners accused of belonging to Al Qaeda or involvement in the unrest unleashed in 2003.

MOGADISHU — US forces have carried out air strikes against the leader of Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked Shabab rebels, with casualties reported but uncertainty hanging over the fate of the main target, officials said Tuesday.

The Pentagon confirmed an "operation" was carried out on Monday against the hardline militia, and that it was "assessing the results".

"The Americans carried out a major air strike targeting a gathering by senior Al Shabab officials, including their leader Abu-Zubayr," said Abdukadir Mohamed Nur, governor for southern Somalia's Lower Shabelle region.

Abu-Zubayr is the often-used name for Al Shabab supreme commander Ahmed Abdi Godane, listed by the US State Department as one of the world's eight top terror fugitives.

If confirmed, Godane's death would be a major blow for Al  Shabab.

Washington has carried out a series of drone missile strikes in the past, including attacks reportedly targeting Godane.

"We are assessing the results of the operation," Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.

$7 million reward

The Shabab refused to comment on reports Godane had been killed.

"Let the Americans say that they have killed Shabab's leader," a senior Shabab official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "So far the Americans just gave us rumours."

The air strike comes days after African Union (AU) troops and government forces launched "Operation Indian Ocean", a major offensive aimed at seizing key ports from the Islamist rebels and cutting off one of their key sources of revenue — multimillion-dollar exports of charcoal.

"They were meeting to discuss about the current offensive in the region," Nur said. "There were casualties inflicted on the militants, but we don't have details so far."

Nur said the strike hit a Shabab hideout used as a training camp for suicide bombers a in remote village of the Lower Shabelle region, south of the capital Mogadishu — the seat of Somalia's internationally-backed but fragile government.

Somali Foreign Minister Abdirahman Dualeh Beileh, speaking at an African Union summit meeting on terrorism in Nairobi, said the government was "still waiting for information" on the strike.

On Saturday the AU mission in Somalia, AMISOM, said it had captured the town of Bulomarer, some 160 kilometres southwest of Mogadishu.

The town was the scene of an attempted raid by French commandos in January 2013 to free an intelligence agent being held hostage. The bid failed and resulted in the death of two members of the French special forces as well as the hostage.

AMISOM and Somali government troops were also seen on roads towards Barawe, the last major port held by the hardline Islamists.

US special forces in October launched an attack on a house in Barawe targeting a top Shabab commander, but were fought off with several US Navy SEALS believed to have been wounded.

Godane, 37, who reportedly trained in Afghanistan with the Taliban, took over the leadership of the Shabab in 2008 after then chief Adan Hashi Ayro was killed by a US missile strike.

Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri has recognised Godane as the head of the "mujahedeen" in East Africa, although letters released after Osama Bin Laden's death show the late Saudi Islamist leader had lower regard for the Somali's abilities.

He is included in a third category of men on whom information warrants a $7-million (5.35-million-euro) reward from the US, alongside Nigeria's Boko Haram leader, but under the Taliban's Mullah Omar, for whom a tip is worth up to $10 million and Zawahiri, who fetches $25 million.

'A major blow' 

"If confirmed, the death of Ahmed Godane could deal a major blow to Al Shabab and could be the beginning of the end," said Abdi Aynte, who heads the Mogadishu-based Heritage Institute think tank.

"The irony is that Godane killed [his] would-be obvious successor, Ibrahim Al Afghani, in a major internal rift last year," Aynte added, saying Godane had structured the Shabab "to bury the organisation with him".

Clint Watts, fellow of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said if Godane had been killed it would have a "significant impact" on the Shabab, with the force likely to splinter.

The Shabab are fighting to topple the government and regularly launch attacks against state targets, as well as in neighbouring countries that contribute to the AU force.

The US strike comes as the United Nations and aid workers warned that large areas of Somalia are struggling with dire hunger and drought, three years after famine killed more than a quarter of a million people.