"American enemy fighters targeted a house in Dhusamareb, around 500 kilometres (310 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu, where some of the leaders of your brothers in the Young Mujahedeen Movement were present," the Young Mujahedeen Movement, better known as the Shabab, said in the statement.

Those who "joined the caravan of martyrs" included "the valiant commander and hero Abu Mohsen al-Ansari (Sheikh Adam Hashi Ayro), who terrorised the infidels," said the statement posted on a website often used by Islamist militant groups.

The statement, whose authenticity could not be independently verified, vowed that militants in Somalia would "exact revenge from America, holder of the cross, and her agents."

The Young Mujahedeen Movement is a Somali Islamist group that was placed on the US government's terror blacklist in March. The militant killed on Thursday, whose full name was Moalim Aden Hashi Ayro, was the group's military leader.

Ethiopian officials and rebels in Somalia said on Thursday that a US air strike killed at least 12 people, including Ayro.

Ayro trained with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and had been linked to the deaths of foreign aid workers in Somalia. He had been a target of a US air strike in 2007.

Another senior Shabab member, Sheikh Muhyadin Omar, was also killed in the strike.

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.

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