Bomb suspect likely not killed in Somalia strike

U.S. officials now say that the mastermind of the East Africa embassy bombings was not likely killed in Sunday's attacks in Somalia, and indeed was probably not even in the area when the attack took place.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a Comoro Islander, is believed to be responsible for bothh the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as well as a 2002 attack on an Israeli hotel in Mombasa, Kenya.

Mohammed allegedly planned the attacks on the embassies that killed 225 people.

He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of the Kenya beach resort hotel and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.

‘Not even in the neighborhood’
However, it is now believed that, as one U.S. official put it, he was “not even in the neighborhood” of the attacks. On Wednesday morning, Somali officials were quoting U.S. officials as saying the United States had killed him. Those officials now discount that likelihood. 

As NBC News reported Tuesday, American officials continue to believe that Mohammed's superior, Abu Talha al-Sudani, the East African military commander for al-Qaida, was killed in the weekend assault by U.S. gunships, and that a local Somali al-Qaida leader, Aden Hashi Ayro, was at least severely wounded, if not killed.

Officials said a bloody passport containing Ayro's name, as well as a bloody shirt and a blood trail, were found at the scene, say US officials.  

NBC reported Tuesday night that Mohammed was unlikely to have been killed in the attack. 

Mohammed is thought to have been the main target of an American air attack on Sunday, Monday local time, on Badmadow island off southern Somalia.

U.S. attack helicopters also strafed suspected al-Qaida fighters in southern Somalia on Tuesday, witnesses said.

Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press that American airstrikes in Somalia would continue. “I know it happened yesterday; it will happen today and it will happen tomorrow,” he said.

It was the first overt military action by the United States in Somalia since it led a U.N. force that intervened in the 1990s in an effort to fight famine. The mission led to clashes between U.N. forces and Somali warlords, including the battle, chronicled in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down,” that killed 18 U.S. soldiers.

U.S. officials speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of its sensitive nature had said earlier that the strike in southern Somalia on Monday, local time, killed five to 10 people believed to be associated with al-Qaida.

More strikes under consideration?
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman on Tuesday would not address whether military operations were continuing. Other defense officials speaking to The AP on condition of anonymity suggested that more strikes were either planned or under consideration.

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