Leading Shebab figure dies in Somalia

MOGADISHU – A leading figure in the Somali-based Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab movement has died in Somalia, the militant group said Thursday. In a death announcement and obituary carried by jihadist media, the Shebab said Sheikh Hassan Abdulahi Turki, known as Hassan Turki, died on Wednesday evening in the Middle Juba region south of the capital Mogadishu. Turki was in his 70s and suffered from poor health. “Sheikh Hassan Abdulahi Turki died last night in Hargeysa Yarey township. We pray to God to give him his mercy and accept his long-term good deeds,” Shebab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage said in an audio message.

Rage said Turki “was one of Somalia’s greatest scholars” who had met “Al-Qaeda leaders, led by Osama bin Laden, twice in Afghanistan and another time in Sudan” and had fought against US soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993, the year 18 US soldiers were killed in the so-called Black Hawk Down incident during an ill-fated intervention. The Ethiopian-born former soldier was a veteran Islamist who played a series of leading roles in Somalia’s civil war. Turki was a founding member of Al-Itihaad Al-Islami in the early 1990s alongside Hassan Dahir Aweys, often regarded as the godfather of militancy in Somalia. Together they also formed a successor group called Hizbul Islam.

AFP