Somalia Govt: US Embassy bombings suspect killed

Jan 10, 2007 (MOGADISHU) — A senior al-Qaida suspect wanted for the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa has been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Somalia, a government official said Wednesday, quoting the Americans.

“I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage,” Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press. “One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead.”

Hassan said it wasn’t yet known if Abu Talha al-Sudani, believed to be an explosives expert, or another suspect, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, had been killed.

He also said the interim government had received its own local intelligence reports that Abdirahman Janaqow, one of the deputy leaders of the rival Islamic movement, had been killed in the attack.

At least three U.S. airstrikes have been launched in the country, Hassan added. “I know it happened yesterday, it will happen today and it will happen tomorrow.”

In Mogadishu, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Ethiopian troops in the south of the capital, but missed the target and hit a house, injuring two civilians, said Khadija Muhyadin.

If confirmed, Mohammed’s death would be a major victory for the U.S. in its hunt for the 1998 embassy bombers. That attack killed 225 people.

Police at the Kenyan coastal border town of Kiunga on Monday arrested a wife of Mohammed, with her three children, according to an internal police report seen by The Associated Press. Halima Badroudine Fazul Husseine, who initially gave her name as Sofia Mohammed Ali, said she and her children aged between four and 15 years, fled Kismayo, where they had lived since December, the report said.

(AP)