US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the death of top African al-Qaeda militant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is a ‘significant blow’ to the group.
He and another militant were killed in an overnight shootout with police at a checkpoint in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, on Tuesday.
Mohammed was reputed to have run al-Qaeda in east Africa, operated in Somalia and evaded capture for over a decade after being accused of playing a lead role in the 1998 US embassy attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 240 people.
Police said they shot Mohammed, also known as Harun, at a checkpoint in Mogadishu after an exchange of fire.
Washington says several al-Qaeda members involved in the embassy bombings sought sanctuary in Somalia's south, its most violent region.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
‘We have confirmed he was killed by our police at a control checkpoint this week,’ Halima Aden, a senior national security officer, said.
The US had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of the Comorian, who spoke five languages and was said to be a master of disguise, forgery and bomb making.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters: ‘Harun Fazul's death is a significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa.’
‘It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere - Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis and our own embassy personnel,’ she said on a visit to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
A senior US official in Washington said that his killing removed one of the group's ‘most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations’.
