15 Sep 2009

Key al-Qaeda figure reported killed in Somalia

10:20 am on 15 September 2009

US special forces have killed a top al-Qaeda suspect during a US military raid in Somalia, American and Somali officials have said.

Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, 28, who has been on the FBI's list of top suspects for years, is wanted over 2002 attacks on a hotel and an Israeli airliner in the Kenyan port of Mombassa.

A senior Somali government source told Reuters the fugitive was in a car with other foreign insurgents from the al-Shabaab rebel group, some 250 km south of the capital Mogadishu, when they were hit.

An American official told the BBC that Kenyan-born Nabhan was "likely killed" during the US military raid.

Witnesses said the soldiers took away two men, and two bodies were left in the road after the attack in the southern coastal town of Barawe.