Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — The United States has targeted the commander of Al Qaida’s Shabab movement in Somalia.

Officials said the U.S. intelligence community tracked Shabab chief Ahmed Abdul Mohammed to a camp south of the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

The officials said the U.S. military conducted an air strike on the camp on Sept. 1 but did not confirm whether Mohammed was in the facility.

“We certainly believe that we hit what we were aiming at,” Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said. “And based on intelligence that, as I said, we believe was actionable — in other words, strong enough — we took this strike.”

Shabab has been regarded as a leading Al Qaida franchise in East Africa. Officials said Mohammed, also known as Ahmed Godane, was responsible for numerous attacks, including one on a mall in Nairobi, Kenya in which 70 people were killed in 2013.

“They’ve also continued to plan plots targeting Westerners, including U.S. personnel in East Africa,” Kirby said on Sept. 2. “In recent months, Al Shabab claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Djibouti that killed a Turkish national and wounded several Western soldiers, as well as a car bomb at the Mogadishu Airport that targeted and killed members of the United Nations convoy.”

Officials said both manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles struck the Shabab camp. They said the aircraft fired AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles as well as unspecified munitions.

The Pentagon did not cite the launching point of the U.S. aircraft. The U.S. military maintains a major facility in Djibouti, meant to cover the Horn of Africa.

Over the last two years, the U.S. military conducted several attacks on suspected Shabab leaders in Somalia. In most the cases, officials later acknowledged that the leaders either escaped or were not in the targeted
facilities.

“This was a very significant blow to their network, to their organization and, we believe, to their ability to continue to conduct terrorist attacks,” Kirby said.

  AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, Ahmed Abdul Mohammed, Ahmed Godane, John Kirby, U.S. confirms air strike took aim at Shabab leader in Somalia