NAIROBI, Kenya — The al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was killed last week at a security checkpoint in Mogadishu by Somali forces who didn’t immediately realize he was the most-wanted man in East Africa, officials said Saturday.
The death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed — a man who topped the FBI’s most-wanted list for nearly 13 years — is the third major strike in six weeks against the worldwide terrorism group that was headed by Osama bin Laden until his death last month.
Mohammed had a $5 million bounty on his head for allegedly planning the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings. The blasts killed 224 people in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Most of the dead were Kenyans. Twelve Americans also died.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was on a visit to Tanzania on Saturday as Somali officials confirmed Mohammed’s death, called the killing 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,” Clinton said.
White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan called Mohammed’s death “another huge setback to al-Qaeda and its extremist allies, and provides a measure of justice to so many who lost loved ones.”
Mohammed was killed Tuesday but was carrying a South African passport, so Somali officials didn’t immediately realize who he was. The body was even buried. Officials later exhumed it.
“We’ve compared the pictures of the body to his old pictures,” said Abdifatah Abdinur, spokesman for Somalia’s minister of information. “They are the same. It is confirmed. He is the man, and he is dead. The man who died is Fazul Abdullah.”
Mohammed, a native of the Comoros Islands, was carrying sophisticated weapons, maps, other operational materials and tens of thousands of dollars when he was killed, said Information Minister Abdulkareem Jama.
Family pictures and correspondence with other militants also were found, he said. The money, equipment and personal effects made officials take a second look at the death, he said.
Gen. Abdikarim Yusuf Dhagabadan, Somalia’s deputy army chief, described the death as “similar to Osama bin Laden’s.”
“He was worse to us than bin Laden,” he said. “It is a victory for the world. It is a victory for Somali army.”
Recent blows to al-Qaeda
May 2: Navy SEALs kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
June 3: Ilyas Kashmiri, an al-Qaeda leader sought in the 2008 Mumbai, India, siege and rumored to be a longshot choice to succeed bin Laden, is reportedly killed in a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan.
Tuesday: Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, is killed by Somali forces at a security checkpoint in Mogadishu.
