A senior al Qaeda suspect wanted for bombing U.S. embassies in East Africa has been killed, a Somali official said Wednesday as witnesses said U.S forces launched a third day of airstrikes.
Also Wednesday, Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister said American troops were needed on the ground to root extremists from his troubled country, and he expected the troops soon.
The death of al Qaeda suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was detailed in an American intelligence report passed on to the Somali authorities. Mohammed, one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists who has evaded capture for eight years, was allegedly harbored by a Somali Islamic movement that had challenged this country's Ethiopian-backed government for power.
"I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage," Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president's chief of staff, said. "One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead."
Somalia wants us back. I'm fine with that. As shocking as it seemed at the time, the death toll in the al-Qaeda-linked "Black Hawk Down" incident of October of 1993, when viewed as one of the opening engagements in this long war, was no disaster. We lost 18 men, a terrible toll on any day, a stunning loss in time of "peace." The other side lost an estimated 500 or more. But that is war. The disaster was the decision to disengage with lawlessness and militant Islam, a decision that greatly encouraged Osama bin Laden.
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