FACTBOX: Key facts about dead Somali al Qaeda commander

(Reuters) - Below are key facts about Aden Hashi Ayro, thought to have been al Qaeda's top leader in Somalia, who was killed in a U.S. air strike on Thursday.

* Ayro headed the Shabaab, the feared military wing of the Somali Islamist administration ousted from power in 2006 which had been waging an insurgency against government forces.

* Trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, Ayro came to attention when he was linked to the murders of four aid workers in Somaliland and more than a dozen Somalis with Western ties.

* The United States accused him of links to al Qaeda, through his mentor Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who led the former Islamist administration. Aweys always denied ties to al Qaeda.

* Ayro drew international condemnation for digging up a colonial-era Italian cemetery in Mogadishu in January 2005. He built a mosque there and intelligence experts said he also had a training camp for militants there.

* Security experts and diplomats say Ayro's help to al Qaeda includes providing safe haven, weapons and housing to its members.

* Among those he is said to have assisted is Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese national thought to be al Qaeda's east African chief and accused by Washington of directing an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in 2002.

* U.S. military officials say they believe Ayro was wounded in an air strike in January 2007.

(Writing and reporting by Bryson Hull in Nairobi; Editing by Daniel Wallis)