MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) said on Tuesday 6 October that its forces, working with international partners it did not name, killed Bashir Ahmed Haji Nunow in a planned operation in Jilib on the night of Thursday 1 October, five days before the announcement. The agency described him as head of al-Shabaab’s Amniyat, the group’s intelligence and security wing, from 2016 to 2024, listed his aliases as Geescadde, Fanax, Gardhuub and Ali Dheere, and blamed him for the Zoobe bombing of October 2017, the deadliest attack in Somalia’s history. In 2022 the United States designated a man it named as Yusuf Ahmed Hajji Nurow, alias Gees Ade, and on 30 August NISA said it had killed another man in Jilib who had run al-Shabaab’s intelligence since 2013.
Five Days From the Jilib Operation to the Statement
NISA’s statement said the operation in Jilib was planned and carried out by the agency’s forces with support from international partners, and that it killed Bashir Ahmed Haji Nunow on the night of Thursday 1 October. Jilib, in Middle Juba, has long served al-Shabaab as a stronghold and command centre, and the district sits inside the territory Jubaland claims. The agency called the man a senior figure who played a major role in planning and carrying out attacks on Somali civilians, and said the operation belonged to a continuing campaign, run with the same partners, against the group’s senior commanders and the networks that organise its bombings.
On 14 October 2017 a truck bomb at the Zoobe junction in Mogadishu killed at least 587 people, according to United Nations figures, and al-Shabaab never formally claimed it. NISA also attributed to Bashir Ahmed Haji Nunow the Ex-Control Afgooye bombing of December 2019, which killed more than 90 people, and the attack known as Zoobe 2, the October 2022 bombings at the education ministry that killed at least 121. Furthermore, the agency linked him to attacks on hotels and on the beachfront at Lido, without naming which ones.
NISA described the death as a heavy blow to al-Shabaab’s leadership and urged the public to report threats through its 199 hotline. Its statement gave no detail of how the man was killed in Jilib, and it did not say whether anyone else was killed or wounded in the operation. The first write-ups of the announcement appeared on the evening of Tuesday 6 October, the earliest at 19:00 UTC, which places the statement five days after the night it describes. By Thursday 8 October no independent account from Jilib had described the operation, and no response from al-Shabaab to the claim had been reported. Moreover, the agency published nothing to explain why the name it gave differs from the name attached to Geescadde in earlier official records.
Geescadde in the American Record
In 2022 the United States Department of State designated Yusuf Ahmed Hajji Nurow as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, describing him as “a leader of al-Shabaab” with the aliases Gees Ade and Abdurrahman Footade. The same notice listed Mohamed Mire, Yasir Jiis, Mohamoud Abdi Aden and Mustaf ‘Ato, and the designation, made under Executive Order 13224, blocked any property the five men held under American jurisdiction. When the designation was announced, Yusuf Ahmed Hajji Nurow was reported to be in charge of the group’s intelligence wing, the Amniyat, and he has since been described as the man Washington named that year as its head, accused of planning suicide attacks and killings. The name NISA published for Geescadde after the Jilib operation, Bashir Ahmed Haji Nunow, carries a different forename and differs by one letter in its last name.
A United Nations report in 2025 recorded that leadership of the Amniyat passed early that year to Abdullahi Osman Mohamed, known as Engineer Ismail. NISA’s dates for Bashir Ahmed Haji Nunow end in 2024, the year before that change. However, the statement on the Jilib operation does not mention Yusuf Ahmed Hajji Nurow, the State Department designation or the 2025 change of command, and the agency has not publicly explained the discrepancy.
The Rewards for Justice programme of the State Department describes Mahad Karate, designated on 21 April 2015, the same day as the group’s emir Ahmed Diriye, as al-Shabaab’s second or shadow deputy emir, who “maintains some command responsibility over Amniyat, al-Shabaab’s intelligence and security wing, which oversees suicide attacks and assassinations in Somalia, Kenya and other countries.” In addition, the fourth alias on NISA’s list carries its own history. Ali Dheere is the name under which the United States offered up to five million dollars in March 2023 for information on Ali Mohamed Rage, al-Shabaab’s long-serving spokesman. NISA did not say whether the alias it assigned to the man killed in Jilib refers to the spokesman, and the published accounts of the statement carry no age, birthplace or photograph of the man it says died.
Three Intelligence Chiefs NISA Says It Killed in Jilib
On Thursday 1 January 2026 NISA announced that it and partner forces had killed Abdullahi Osman, Engineer Ismail, together with his deputy Abdikarim Hersi, known as Qoorleex, in a targeted operation near Jilib on 10 December 2025. The agency described Abdullahi Osman as al-Shabaab’s senior explosives official and a senior leader, if not the top leader, of the Amniyat, and said he had also run the group’s media wing. Neither the United States nor Turkiye reported a drone strike in that location on that day, and al-Shabaab, which sometimes leaves the deaths of its leaders unconfirmed, did not comment on either man. NISA’s announcement came twenty-two days after the operation it described.
On Sunday 30 August NISA said an operation planned jointly by its forces and international partners had killed Abdullahi Hashi Labajir, known as Ikhlaas, in Jilib district a week earlier, on Sunday 23 August. Its statement called him “the overall head of intelligence” for al-Shabaab, a post the agency said he had held since 2013, with responsibility for “counter-intelligence, surveillance, and the planning of attacks against Somali security forces and civilians.” The government did not disclose the precise role he held, and at the time it released no evidence that would allow his death to be independently verified. The partners again went unnamed.
Taken at the agency’s word, Abdullahi Hashi Labajir ran al-Shabaab’s intelligence from 2013 while Bashir Ahmed Haji Nunow ran its Amniyat from 2016 to 2024, and Engineer Ismail, whom the United Nations placed at the head of the Amniyat in 2025, died near Jilib in December. By NISA’s account all three were killed in or near Jilib with international partners, and their deaths were announced twenty-two, seven and five days after each operation. In December 2023 Somalia announced that it had killed Maalim Ayman, a senior al-Shabaab commander. A United Nations monitoring team report in July 2024 said he was still alive and operational.
The Partners Over Jilib Who Go Unnamed
On Wednesday 30 September United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) published its release on airstrikes carried out on Friday 25 September in coordination with the federal government, near Welmaro, about 40 kilometres west of Jilib, and near Ali Farhan, about 90 kilometres northeast of the town. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” the command said.
Two days earlier it had announced a strike on Thursday 24 September near Quumbi, about 90 kilometres north-northwest of Kismayo, and on 7 August it reported another strike in the vicinity of Jilib. The command has stopped publishing casualty estimates and assessments of possible civilian harm, and by one independent tally its strikes in Somalia this year had reached at least 86 by the end of September. By Wednesday 7 October AFRICOM had published no release covering the night of 1 October, and its most recent strike notice still concerned 25 September.
On 31 August Turkish F-16 aircraft were reported striking riverbank positions at Basra, thirty kilometres from Villa Somalia, during an operation the defence ministry announced without naming a unit. Overnight into Friday 4 September an aircraft struck the Doolow compound of General Mahad Abdirahman Aden, wounding him and his wife and killing at least three people around him, and no government claimed it. The American and Turkish air forces are the two foreign air arms known to strike in Somalia, and NISA’s phrase for the force behind the Jilib operation, “international partners”, names neither.
In mid-September the agency announced eleven arrests in Mogadishu and Afgooye and named none of the detainees, with no arrest times, charges or court records. Days later it named the men it said it had killed at Guulane in Middle Shabelle, which it rarely does, and no independent account of the scene followed. The Jilib statement gives the dead man a name, four aliases and three bombings, and gives the operation no aircraft, no country and no casualty count. Since January NISA has named three Amniyat or intelligence chiefs it says it killed in or near Jilib and has not once named the partner it worked with.
