Somalia's Shebab name market after slain Qaeda boss

MOGADISHU — Somalia's Shebab Islamist rebel group said Monday it had renamed a market in their coastal stronghold of Barawe after Saleh Nabhan, a top Al Qaeda leader killed last year in a US helicopter raid.Barawe is a small port located 100 miles (160 kilometres) south of Mogadishu, in the heart of a region controlled by the Shebab, a hardline Somali insurgent group whose leader recently swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden."The Islamic administration in the region decided to name this market after the great martyred Islamic figure who was killed by the enemy of Allah on our soil," Sheikh Mohamed Ali, a top local Shebab official, told AFP."He will be remembered forever," he added"There is a board with the name of Salah Nabhan on the front gate of the market, which is traditionally the place where milk is sold," local resident Abdi Gacal told AFP.Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan-born Muslim, was killed in a US helicopter raid near Barawe in September.He was one of four top Al-Qaeda militants behind the 2002 attacks in which an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan resort of Mombasa was bombed and rockets were fired at an Israeli airliner.According to Somali and Western intelligence sources, hundreds of foreign fighters -- some of them with ties to Al-Qaeda -- have flocked to Somalia in recent months and are working with or being sheltered by the Shebab.The Shebab have since May 2009 been engaged in a bruising insurgency against the internationally-backed transitional federal government but controls and administers large swathes of land in central and southern Somalia."We have renovated several market places in this region ruined by civil strife and at least one of them had the fortune of being given the name of our brother Nabhan," Sheikh Mohamed Ali said.Somalia's Shebab name market after slain Qaeda boss‎ -