{"id":439633,"date":"2011-06-11T18:43:04","date_gmt":"2011-06-11T18:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/"},"modified":"2011-06-11T18:43:04","modified_gmt":"2011-06-11T18:43:04","slug":"us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/","title":{"rendered":"US hails death of al-Qaeda militant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div readability=\"135.093365554\"><span><span>11 June 2011<\/span> <span>Last updated at<\/span> <span>14:43 ET<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the death of top African al-Qaeda militant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is a &#8220;significant blow&#8221; to the group.<\/p>\n<p>He and another militant were killed earlier this week in a shootout with police at a checkpoint in Somalia&#8217;s capital, Mogadishu, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Mohammed was the most wanted man in Africa, with a $5m bounty on his head.<\/p>\n<p>He was suspected having played a key role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, which killed 224 people.<\/p>\n<p>He was also accused of attacking Israeli targets on the Kenyan coast in 2002, and was recently believed to have been working with the Islamist militant group, al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia.<\/p>\n<p><span>&#8216;Victory for the world&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Mr Mohammed was shot dead by Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces in north-western Mogadishu overnight on Tuesday, Somali security officials said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our forces fired on two men who refused to stop at a roadblock. They tried to defend themselves when they were surrounded by our men,&#8221; TFG commander Abdikarim Yusuf told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We took their ID documents, one of which was a foreign passport,&#8221; he said, adding that medicine, mobile phones and laptops were also found.<\/p>\n<p>Somali sources told AFP that Mr Mohammed was carrying $40,000 in cash and a South African passport bearing the name Daniel Robinson.<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-africa-13739567#story_continues_2\">Continue reading the main story<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Fazul Abdullah Mohammed<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Born in Moroni, Comoros islands, in the Indian Ocean<\/li>\n<li>Indicted in the US over 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania<\/li>\n<li>One of FBI&#8217;s most wanted terror suspects with $5m reward<\/li>\n<li>Speaks French, Swahili, Arabic, English and Comoran<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Source: FBI<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Gen Abdikarim Yusuf Dhagabadan, Somalia&#8217;s army chief, said officials at first did not know who the dead man was.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We buried him,&#8221; he told the Associated Press. &#8220;But soon after checking his documents, [we] exhumed his body and took his pictures and DNA. Then we learned that he was the man wanted by the US authorities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The general described the death as &#8220;similar to Osama bin Laden&#8217;s&#8221;, who was killed in a US commando raid on his home in northern Pakistan on 2 May.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is a victory for the world. It is a victory for Somali army,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>A senior US government official also told the BBC that it was a &#8220;very big deal&#8221; and commended the actions of the Transitional Federal Government.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Fazul Abdullah Mohammed&#8217;s death removes one of the terrorist group&#8217;s most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations,&#8221; the official said.<\/p>\n<div readability=\"32\">\n<div>\n<div readability=\"7\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"holding\" src=\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/53364000\/jpg\/_53364385_tanz.jpg\" alt=\"Fazul Abdullah Mohammed\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Please turn on JavaScript.<\/strong> Media requires JavaScript to play.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>The United States have put a $5m bounty on Mohammed<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>After landing in Tanzania&#8217;s capital, Dar es Salaam, on the second leg of a tour of Africa, Mrs Clinton told reporters: &#8220;[His] death is a significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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 &#8211; Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis, and our own embassy personnel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Born in the Comoros islands in the early 1970s, Mr Mohammed is believed to have joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>After the bombings of the US embassies in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam in 1998, the US authorities accused him of involvement and offered the $5m reward for information leading to his capture.<\/p>\n<p>In 2002, Mr Mohammed was reported to have been put in charge of al-Qaeda operations in East Africa.<\/p>\n<p>That year, he was blamed for the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel at the beach resort of Kikambala, Kenya, which left 13 people dead, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger aircraft in nearby Mombasa.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, he survived a US air strike on the southern Somali coastal village of Hayo, near the town of Ras Kamboni.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, Mr Mohammed is thought to have joined other foreign militants in Somalia fighting fought alongside al-Shabab, which declared allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2010. It said reports of his death were untrue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read more:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/go\/rss\/int\/news\/-\/news\/world-africa-13739567\" title=\"US hails death of al-Qaeda militant\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">US hails death of al-Qaeda militant<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> 11 June 2011 Last updated at 14:43 ET US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the death of top African al-Qaeda militant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is a &#8220;significant blow&#8221; to the group. He and another militant were killed earlier this week in a shootout with police at a checkpoint in Somalia&#8217;s capital, Mogadishu, officials said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>US hails death of al-Qaeda militant - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"US hails death of al-Qaeda militant - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"11 June 2011 Last updated at 14:43 ET US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the death of top African al-Qaeda militant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is a &quot;significant blow&quot; to the group. 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He and another militant were killed earlier this week in a shootout with police at a checkpoint in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, officials said.","twitter_image":"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/53364000\/jpg\/_53364385_tanz.jpg","twitter_creator":"@ghanamma","twitter_site":"@ghanamma","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/"},"author":{"name":"","@id":""},"headline":"US hails death of al-Qaeda militant","datePublished":"2011-06-11T18:43:04+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/"},"wordCount":703,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/53364000\/jpg\/_53364385_tanz.jpg","inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/","url":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/","name":"US hails death of al-Qaeda militant - Ghanamma.com","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/53364000\/jpg\/_53364385_tanz.jpg","datePublished":"2011-06-11T18:43:04+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/11\/us-hails-death-of-al-qaeda-militant\/#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/53364000\/jpg\/_53364385_tanz.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/53364000\/jpg\/_53364385_tanz.jpg"},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/","name":"Ghanamma.com","description":"News In Ghana - Latest Ghana News Headlines","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}