Reporting from Washington— In a blow to Al Qaeda's efforts to control havens in East Africa, the Al Qaeda operative believed responsible for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya has been gunned down by Somali security forces, U.S. officials said Saturday. The killing of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is another major loss for the terrorist organization after the death of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in Pakistan six weeks ago.
Mohammed was an experienced operational planner who played a major role in persuading African militant groups involved in local insurrections to join Al Qaeda's global fight, U.S. officials and experts said.
White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan said in a statement Saturday that Mohammed's death is a "huge setback" for Al Qaeda.
The FBI's most-wanted man in Africa, Mohammed played a leadership role in the planning of the 1998 bombings that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement released during a visit to Tanzania on Saturday.
The State Department had offered a $5-million reward for information leading to Mohammed.
Somali security forces did not immediately identify Mohammed when he was killed during a shootout Wednesday at a checkpoint northwest of Mogadishu, the capital. His identity was not confirmed until Saturday.
A Kenyan national, Mohammed had expert computer skills and a preference for baseball caps, according to a State Department report.
Mohammed was crucial in persuading members of the Somali militant group Shabab to pledge loyalty to Al Qaeda in recent years, said a U.S. intelligence official who discussed intelligence matters on the condition of anonymity.
Shabab has been at the forefront of radicalizing and recruiting first- and second-generation Somali Americans to join the fight against Somalia's United Nations-backed government.
Over the last 10 years, Al Qaeda has placed "great emphasis" on expanding its operations into ungoverned regions of East Africa, said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.
"Mohammed found ways to take those [militant groups] with more nationalist regional aims and pull them into the broader global jihad," Cilluffo said.
In East Africa, Al Qaeda will have trouble finding a leader with Mohammed's standing and savvy, said Rick Nelson, a counter-terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
"He will be replaced, but not by another individual with his type of experience and his competence," Nelson said.
