http://www.debka.com/headline_print.php?hid=3711US air strike kills Al QaedaÂ’s East African commander, mastermind of 1998 American embassy bombings, in S. Somalia
January 10, 2007, 2:29 PM (GMT+02:00)
Officials in Washington say these air strikes are based on credible intelligence of the presence of al QaedaÂ’s regional leaders in the seafront jungle areas to which they and Islamist leaders headed after being routed in Mogadishu.
Fazul, a Comorian, was a big fish. His FBI dossier is long and diverse. DEBKAfileÂ’s counter-terror sources report he was one of al QaedaÂ’s most outstanding, versatile and elusive commanders.
In 1993, Fazul took part in the 1993 in the Black Hawk Down ambush which left 18 US soldiers dead; in 1995, he was part of a failed assassination conspiracy against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa; in 1998, he masterminded the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam. Fazul was more directly involved in anti-Israel attacks than any other al Qaeda leader: In, he set up the 1996 Ethiopian Airline hijack in which four Israeli air industry directors and 3 Israeli civilians were murdered. He was among the organizers of the Oct. 2000 ramming of the USS Cole in Aden Harbor, which cost the lives of 19 US seamen. In 2002, he set up the coordinated anti-air missiles attack and raid of the Israeli Mombasa Paradise hotel in Kenya and the Israeli Arkia airliner flying tourists into the resort.
Our sources add that Mohammed Fazul was the senior contact between al QaedaÂ’s East African network and its Sinai cells.
Still at large are senior al Qaeda leaders Ali Saleh Nabhan, from Kenya, and Abu Taha al-Sudani, from Sudan. FazulÂ’s death is a major American feat in the war on global terror. It is pivotal to eradicating al QaedaÂ’s operational network in East Africa which the dead jihadist designed and headed.
It will have vindicated WashingtonÂ’s investment in the Somali operation, described by DEBKAfileÂ’s military sources as the biggest anti-al Qaeda operation since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.
The ongoing operation has focused substantial naval, air and marine strength around Somali shores, led by The USS Eisenhower carrier which is patrolling the water between Ras Kamboni on the Somali-Kenyan border and Kismayo port. Kenyan units and the German navy are also deployed. They have cornered the embattled al Qaeda and Islamic Courts fugitives who are fighting out of their last positions after being driven south from Mogadishu. Warplanes from the Eisenhower continue to pound al Qaeda-Islamist routes to safety to the high peaks on the Somali-Kenyan frontier, or to sea, disguised as fishermen, through a chain of small Indian Ocean islands.
The AC-130 gunship strikes from US air bases in Kenya were launched Monday night, Jan. 8, when a combined Ethiopian-Somali military onslaught failed to resolve the battle with the Islamists in this southern tip of S. Somalia and casualties were mounting steeply on both sides. DEBKAfileÂ’s military sources disclose that even when Kenyan special forces under US command were thrown into the fray, the battle was undecided.
The US warships now engaged in the Somali campaign, the first direct American military intervention in the country since the 1993 mission, also include the guided missile destroyers USS Ramage and USS Bunker Hill, as well as German naval units stationed in Kenyan ports. They are blasting the Islamist concentrations from the sea.
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