Somali bomb suspect 'killed' in US strike

A prominent al-Qa'ida operative wanted by the FBI was killed in a US military raid in southern Somalia yesterday, a US official said.

Kenyan-born Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, 28, was suspected of building the truck bomb that killed 15 people at a Kenyan hotel in 2002, as well as involvement in a simultaneous, but botched, missile launch at an Israeli airliner leaving Mombasa airport.

A senior Somali government source said the fugitive was in a car with other foreign insurgents from the al Shabaab rebel group when they were hit near Roobow village in Barawe District, some 150 miles south of the capital Mogadishu.

Washington says al Shabaab is al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia.

A US official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US special operations forces aboard two helicopters opened fired on the vehicle that they believed contained Nabhan.

The troops took the body into custody, the official said, and were confident the body was that of Nabhan.

The official said a total of four Somalis were killed while the Somali government source said that Nabhan and four others died.

"These young fighters do not have the same skills as their colleagues in Afghanistan or elsewhere when it comes to foreign air strikes," the government source told Reuters. "They are in confusion now. I hope the world takes action."

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to comment "on any alleged operation in Somalia."

Western security agencies say the failed Horn of Africa state has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who use it to plot attacks in the region and beyond.

Nabhan, who has long been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted list, is believed to have fled to Somalia after the 2002 bombing of a Israeli-owned Kenyan beach hotel.