Mogadishu: At least 12 people, including the head of Al-Qaeda in Somalia, were killed today when the US military carried out an airstrike on an Islamist target in country's central Somalia, elders said.

According to the militant Shabab movement, two senior Islamists were among the dead, including Moalim Aden Hashi Ayro that the Somalian government said was Al-Qaeda's leader in the country.

"We are still digging debris at the house that was totally demolished. We have so far recovered 10 bodies, including that of Ayro," Abshir Moalim Ali, an elder in Dhusamareb district of central Somalia, told AFP.

"Two more people who were admitted in a hospital died of injuries. They were civilians seriously wounded in a nearby house," said Hussein Haji Mohamed, an elder in Dhusamareb.

In Washington, the Pentagon confirmed an attack on an Al-Qaeda military leader in Somalia but declined to identify him and would not initially say whether the mission had been successful.

An insurgency spokesman said the airstrike killed Ayro and Sheikh Muhyadin Omar.

Shabab, on its website, www.kataaib.net, paid tribute to Ayro as a "brave personality."

The group added that Shabab would pursue its "jihad" under its main leader Mukhtar Abu-Zubeyr.

"The struggle was not a work of a single man," the statement added. Abu-Zubeyr is the general head of Shabab and Ayro led its military wing.

Source : PTI