Residents in the town of Dusamareb said they believed two missiles were fired in what they said was a US air strike.

“Infidel planes bombed Dusamareb. Two of our important people, including Aden Hashi Ayrow, were killed in the incident,” Mukhtar Robow Adumansur, a senior commander for the Islamist movement, said.

One resident said five Islamist fighters and a house maid were killed in the attack.

“An American plane bombed the house of al Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayrow,” one resident said.

“I could see pieces of human bodies lying outside the house. It was difficult to go in because of heavily armed Islamists guarding the area.”

Another resident said the town was woken up by two loud explosions at about 2 AM.

“When we came out, we saw a home in the neighbourhood entirely destroyed by two missiles fired by planes flying over us. We counted four planes,” said Amina Warsame, a resident of the town that is in central Somalia.

Security and intelligence sources say Ayro trained in insurgency tactics in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

The US military has launched several air strikes against suspected militants in Somalia over the past year.

The Pentagon in Washington had no immediate information on the attack.

Branded terrorists by Washington, al Shabaab has led an Iraq-style insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian allies since early 2007.

The insurgency began when the Islamic Courts Union, of which al Shabaab was a part, lost control of Mogadishu after a brief, six-month rule of south Somalia.