“At around 2 p.m., a U.S. drone targeted our Mujahidin. One foreigner, a Lebanese with a British passport died”, the chief spokesman for Al-Shabaab, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, told news agency Reuters, “Bilal Al-Barjawi, a great Mujahid brother who was in Somalia for a long time was killed today. He was in a car in Elasha. This foreigner is a martyr.”
The British-Lebanese is Bilal Al-Barjawi known as “Abu Hafsa”, a Islamist who came to Somalia in 2006 and served as the deputy to Fazul Abdallah, Al-Qaida´s most senior commander in Somalia killed in June 2011 by Somali troops in a Mogadishu shoot-out.
When a U.S. airstrike targeted Lower Jubba region in Southern Somalia in July 2011 Bilal Al-Barjawi was injured on his head and later received treatment in Kenya according to Al-Shabaab.
British intelligence officials have warned about the emerging threat of Western Jihadi militants trained as terrorists in Somalia – especially those holding Western passports. Numerous of these foreigners have died in Somalia, most of them during gun-battles, others became suicide bombers. If the news of Bilal Al-Barjawi is confirmed, this shows: a Western Jihadi was for some years Al-Qaida´s No.2 man in the country. |