Mohammed survived a US air strike in southern Somalia in 2007 Saturday, 11 June 2011
US hails death of al-Qaeda militant
Mohammed survived a US air strike in southern Somalia in 2007 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 earlier this week in a shootout with police at a checkpoint in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, officials said.
Mr Mohammed was the most wanted man in Africa, with a $5m bounty on his head.
He was suspected having played a key role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, which killed 224 people.
He was also accused of attacking Israeli targets on the Kenyan coast in 2002, and was recently believed to have been working with the Islamist militant group, al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia.
Mr Mohammed was shot dead by Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces in north-western Mogadishu overnight on Tuesday, Somali security officials said.
"Our forces fired on two men who refused to stop at a roadblock. They tried to defend themselves when they were surrounded by our men," TFG commander Abdikarim Yusuf told the AFP news agency.
"We took their ID documents, one of which was a foreign passport," he said, adding that medicine, mobile phones and laptops were also found.
Somali sources told AFP that Mr Mohammed was carrying $40,000 in cash and a South African passport bearing the name Daniel Robinson.
Fazul Abdullah MohammedBorn in Moroni, Comoros islands, in the Indian OceanIndicted in the US over 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and TanzaniaOne of FBI's most wanted terror suspects with $5m rewardSpeaks French, Swahili, Arabic, English and Comoran
Source: FBI
Profile: Fazul Abdullah Mohammed In pictures: Life of Fazul Abdullah MohammedGen Abdikarim Yusuf Dhagabadan, Somalia's army chief, said officials at first did not know who the dead man was.
"We buried him," he told the Associated Press. "But soon after checking his documents, [we] exhumed his body and took his pictures and DNA. Then we learned that he was the man wanted by the US authorities."
The general described the death as "similar to Osama bin Laden's", who was killed in a US commando raid on his home in northern Pakistan on 2 May.
"It is a victory for the world. It is a victory for Somali army," he added.
A senior US government official also told the BBC that it was a "very big deal" and commended the actions of the Transitional Federal Government.
"Fazul Abdullah Mohammed's death removes one of the terrorist group's most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations," the official said.
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