{"id":25760,"date":"2016-06-02T02:13:30","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T02:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/garissa-attack-mastermind-killed-in-somalia\/"},"modified":"2016-06-02T02:13:14","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T02:13:14","slug":"garissa-attack-mastermind-killed-in-somalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/garissa-attack-mastermind-killed-in-somalia\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Garissa attack mastermind’ killed in Somalia"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Mohamed Mohamud Ali was accused of leading the April 2015 attack on university that killed 148 people.}<\/p>\n

A commander believed to have orchestrated the 2015 deadly attack on Kenya’s Garissa University has been killed in a special forces raid in southern Somalia, a top local official said.<\/p>\n

Local security forces in the coastal Somali town of Kismayo announced on Wednesday that Mohamed Mohamud Ali, the suspected architect of the bloodbath in Garissa, had been killed in a raid in southwestern Somalia overnight.<\/p>\n

“Sixteen armed men, four of them senior commanders including Mohamed Mohamud Ali, known as Dulyadin … were killed by the Somali commandos and the special forces of the Jubaland,” said Abdirashid Janan, minister of state security for Jubaland, an autonomous region in southern Somalia.<\/p>\n

Local officials paraded the bodies of the four suspected commanders in the streets of Kismayo. The three other suspects were not idetified. <\/p>\n

In Washington, US officials said American forces provided advice and assistance support in the operation. They spoke to the AP news agency on condition of anonymity. <\/p>\n

The April 2015 assault at Garissa University College, 365km northeast of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, left 148 people dead, 142 of them students.<\/p>\n

The victims were slain in their dormitories or rounded up and executed in a hall of residence.<\/p>\n

The operation was carried out by four al-Shabab gunmen.<\/p>\n

The attack was the bloodiest in Kenya since al-Qaeda bombed the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, killing 213 people.<\/p>\n

Last July, the Kenyan government said Dulyadin had been killed in a US drone strike, but it swiftly backtracked on the claim.<\/p>\n

Drone strike<\/p>\n

Separately on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said a senior al-Shabab military commander, Abdullahi Haji Da’ud, was “presumed killed” following a US air strike last Friday.<\/p>\n

“Da’ud was one of al-Shabab’s most senior military planners and served as a principal coordinator of [the group’s] attacks in Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda,” Cook told reporters in San Diego.<\/p>\n

“We are confident that the removal from the terrorist network of this experienced al-Shabab commander with extensive operational experience will disrupt near-term attack planning, potentially saving many innocent lives,” Cook said, adding that the US is still assessing the results of the strike.<\/p>\n

Al-Shabab fighters were chased out of Mogadishu in 2011 but the group remains a dangerous threat. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, fighters from the armed group launched a suicide attack in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, killing at least 15 people.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Mohamed Mohamud Ali was accused of leading the April 2015 attack on university that killed 148 people.} A commander believed to have orchestrated the 2015 deadly attack on Kenya’s Garissa University has been killed in a special forces raid in southern Somalia, a top local official said. Local security forces in the coastal Somali town […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25760"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25760"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}