Al-Qaida mastermind shot dead in Somalia

SOMALIA’S president said his security forces will defeat al-Qaida and its affiliate militants in the war-ravaged country, after they killed Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Africa’s most wanted al-Qaida operative.

“We have overpowered al-Qaida and al Shabaab in Somalia, they are weak and now melting away,” said President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed whose Horn of Africa country has been without effective central government since 1991.

“(Mohammed’s) death is a major setback to al Shabaab and al-Qaida . . . He was a great burden to our government and to the neighbouring countries,” Ahmed told reporters.

Mohammed reputedly ran al-Qaida in east Africa from his base in southern Somalia, where he hid for more than a decade after being accused of playing a lead role in 1998 US embassy attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 240 people.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on a visit to Tanzania’s capital Dar es Salaam, said al-Qaida had suffered a blow with the death of Osama bin Laden, and another “significant blow” with the death of Mohammed.

Mohammed had been responsible for “despicable acts” which killed hundreds and injured thousands during his career, she said.

Security forces shot Mohammed at a checkpoint in Mogadishu. Analysts said his death robbed al-Qaida, and al Shabaab, of its most skilled operator and trainer, a master of attack planning as well as a computer expert with at least 18 aliases and a flair for disguise, forgery and bomb-making.