MOSCOW (Sputnik) – A senior leader of the al-Shabaab terror group linked to al-Qaeda, outlawed in Russia, was killed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, a local official said.
"Security forces conducted an operation at Suka-Holaha neighborhood in Mogadishu and killed Al-Shabaab commander named Ja'far Kukay after he resisted arrest. Two guns were recovered during the operation," Abdifitah Omar Halane, the spokesman from the Benadir region located in Heliwa District of Mogadishu, said, as quoted by the Xinhua news agency.
Somalia has been experiencing violence since the country devolved into civil war in the early 1990s. The state’s collapse provided a breeding ground for warlords, pirates and the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabaab. The group has been staging numerous attacks in Somalia in an attempt to create an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law.
