- Dec 5, 2010
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1998 U.S. Embassy blast suspect reported killed
Al Qaeda leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (inset), wanted for overseeing the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The blast killed 213 people, including 12 Americans. (FBI/AP Photo/Dave Caulkin)
Read more: 1998 U.S. Embassy blast suspect reported killed - CBS News
The al-Qaida operative behind the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania has been killed, a Somali official said Saturday.
Somali officials have determined that a man killed by security forces on Tuesday was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, said a spokesman for Somalia's minister of information, Abdifatah Abdinur.
"We've compared the pictures of the body to his old pictures," he said. "They are the same. It is confirmed. He is the man and he is dead. The man who died is Fazul Abdullah."
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said: "There's strong reason to believe he's dead. He was killed at a police checkpoint in Mogadishu."
Abdinur said Somali the government is planning to issue a statement confirming Mohamed's death.
Before the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Mohammed trained Islamic militants in Somalia. He later organized attacks on Israeli tourists in Kenya.
"He's an extraordinarily dangerous individual," Dan Coleman, a retired FBI agent who spent years hunting al Qaeda, told CBS News in 2007. "He's the real deal."
According to testimony and evidence introduced during the 2001 embassy bombings trial in New York, Mohammed rented the walled villa in Nairobi where the conspirators assembled the Kenya embassy truck bomb. On the day of the attacks, he drove a white pickup as lead vehicle ahead of the explosives-laden truck toward the embassy.
1998 U.S. Embassy blast suspect reported killed - CBS News
They can run and hide. For a while....