Mohammed had topped the FBI’s most-wanted list for nearly 13 years, with a $5 million bounty on his head, for orchestrating the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
Somali forces killed Mohammed, believed to be in his late 30s, during a late-night shooting in Mogadishu on Tuesday, after he and another man apparently got lost and mistakenly drove their truck to a security checkpoint manned by government soldiers. When the two men tried to speed away, the soldiers opened fire, killing them instantly, Somali officials said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, while on a visit to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, confirmed Mohammed’s death and described it as “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.”
The United States conducted a DNA analysis to confirm Mohammed’s demise, a U.S. official said Saturday.
U.S. Special Forces and drones, in recent years, have killed other senior al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia, but the United States is not believed to have played a role in Mohammed’s death.
Mohammed was a founder of al-Shabab, which controls large swaths of Somalia and has imposed a Taliban-like brand of Islam in its areas, including cutting off the limbs of accused thieves. The group has openly expressed its allegiance to al-Qaeda; jihadists from around the world, including the United States and Europe, have flocked to the Horn of Africa nation to join the militia, which Washington has labeled a terrorist organization.
“There were a number of notorious al-Qaeda figures in East Africa who provided the main link between al-Shabab and al-Qaeda central. He was one of them,” said Evan Kohlmann, a New York-based terrorism expert with Flashpoint Partners, a global security research firm. “Most of these people have been removed.”
“This was one the final nails in the coffin of the original first generation al-Qaeda leaders in East Africa.”
Al-Shabab has faced heavy pressure from African Union forces sent to protect Somalia’s fragile, U.S.-backed transitional government. In recent months, the militia has been pushed out of several neighborhoods in Mogadishu and elsewhere, and scores of its fighters have been killed.
Mohammed’s death could weaken the links between al-Shabab and al-Qaeda’s central leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bin Laden and other senior leaders preferred to deal directly with operatives they knew and trusted from years of jihad in Afghanistan. For instance, bin Laden’s former personal secretary, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, leads Yemen’s al-Qaeda branch.
Loading...
Comments