Ahmed Abdi Godane, the leader of the Islamic militant organization behind the siege on a mall in Kenya last year, was killed in a U.S. military strike earlier this week, the prime minister of Somalia said Friday on Facebook. A source also confirmed the death to NBC News.
The U.S. strike on Monday targeted Godane, the leader of al Shabab, but U.S. officials said later they did not know whether he had been killed. The siege last September at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi left 67 people dead and about 200 injured.
“We tell the Somalis that Godane is dead,” Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheik Ahmed said on Facebook, Reuters reported.
A U.S. source earlier this week described Godane as “operationally savvy and ideologically driven, with aspirations off the charts.” The United States in 2012 offered a $7 million reward for his arrest. Godane took leadership of al Shabab after his predecessor was killed in an American airstrike in 2008.
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