Al-Qaeda's presumed head in east Africa, Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, wanted for blowing up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, died in a shootout in the Somali capital, officials said Saturday.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted immediately, calling it 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," she said in Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam during an African tour.
The 38-year-old is thought to have planned the massive truck bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people in 1998 and had a $5 million bounty on his head, making him Africa's most wanted man.
"We have confirmed by DNA tests carried out with our partners that it definitely was Fazul Abdullah," an official at Somali's National Security Agency told AFP. (AFP)
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