The U.S. State Department on Wednesday announced rewards amounting to $27 million for information on six key leaders of the Somali Islamist group, al-Shabaab.
In a breakdown, the State Department in Washington offered $6 million for information on Abu Ubaidah, who became head of the terrorist group after a US air-strike took out Ahmed Abdi Godane in September 2014.
Also, there is $5 million for information on Mahad Karate, who allegedly planned the attack on Kenya’s Garrissa University College that killed 148 people.
The same reward is offered for two other al-Shabaab planners, Ma’alim Daud and Hassan Afgooye, while $3 million a reward is in place for two other leaders, Maalim Salman and Ahmed Iman Ali.
“Since 2006, al-Shabaab has killed thousands of civilians, aid workers and peacekeepers in Somalia, Uganda and, more recently, Kenya.
The reward announcement came after the Somali Prime Minister, Omar Sharmarke, warned that al-Shabaab had proclaimed its allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group, posing the possibility of a renewed threat to the region.
He said resolving the crisis in Yemen was crucial to keeping the Islamic State out of Somalia as extremists could use Yemen as a “conduit or launching pad’’.
Al-Shabaab is a militant group seeking an Islamist state in Somalia and controlled most of southern and central Somalia and parts of Mogadishu between 2009 and 2010 before being driven out.