The Foreign Office is investigating reports that a British Muslim has been killed in Somalia following a “falling-out” with al-Shabaab.
The self-styled Osama al-Britani, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, is reported to have died in an early morning attack on a village near Mogadishu on Thursday (September 12).
The death is said to have been confirmed by local residents and a senior source in al-Shabaab. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We are aware of reports of the death of a British national in Somalia and are looking into this.”
Al-Britani is said to have been killed alongside American Omar al-Amriki, who was among the most prominent foreign militants fighting in Somalia. Al-Amikri, whose birth name is Omar Hammami, has been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List since November last year and is known for recording jihadist rap videos and posting them on YouTube.
The two men were allies of veteran Somali Islamist, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who split from al-Shabaab in June. He is currently in the custody of the UN-backed government. Al-Shabaab has vowed to hunt down and kill all allies of Aweys since the split.
There have been a number of previous reports of al-Amriki’s death since he fell out with the top al-Shabaab commander, Ahmed Abdi Godane. However earlier this month he surfaced in an interview with Voice of America’s Somali Service in which he denounced Godane as a dictator and said that he had finished with al-Shabaab and al Qaida.
The news of the killings of the Western militants in Somalia comes a day after a group of 160 leading Islamic scholars issued a fatwa denouncing al-Shabab, saying the group had no place in Islam. Islam experts say the fatwa, issued by so many prominent scholars, is likely to sway opinions on the ground, but is unlikely to change the path of those in the group’s top leadership.
