Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a citizen of both Kenya and Comoros had been wanted for his suspected role in the bombings of US Embassies located in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than 225 people. Those events took place in 1998 and since then, Mohammed has been high on the wanted list as well as being considered a senior al-Qaeda operative by the United States. He was also suspected in a number of other attacks in Kenya and Somalia but had evaded capture and assassination attempts.

On Friday, Mohammed and a second man whose identity has not been uncovered, drove toward a Somali checkpoint in Mogadishu and then opened fire before trying to speed away from that checkpoint. The Somali transitional government forces that had been manning the blockade returned fire, shooting and killing both men in the vehicle. Mohammed was immediately identified, despite numerous reports that he had had plastic surgery to alter his appearance. Kenyan and US officials have confirmed reports of the man’s death but gave no further details.

After the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies, Mohammed is alleged to have masterminded the attacks on an Israeli owned hotel and jetliner in Kenya, in 2002. After that second offense, the US offered a five million dollar reward for any information on his whereabouts but that failed to generate any real and viable information that could be used.

The UN Security Council named Mohammed as one of 25 al-Quaeda operatives that are subject to UN sanction in 2007. During that year, a US led air strike failed in a mission to eliminate Mohammed. The following year, he managed to elude a police led raid in the coastal Kenyan town of Malindi.

Mohammed had long been called the mastermind in a number of attacks, mostly centered against US and Israeli interests in Africa.

Also in Somali, the Interior Minister, Abdishakur Sheik Hassan was killed after an attack by a female bomber, however there are conflicting reports on the details. One report has claimed that the attack was a suicide bomb, carried about by Hassan’s own niece while other reports deny this as completely false. What is known is that Hassan had been transported to a medical care center where he was briefly treated for wounds to his head and one of his legs but died quickly after his arrival.

Somalia has been in the news recently because of Somali pirates that have been plaguing foreign ships and have been costing twelve billion dollars a year in lost shipments, crew members and ransoms. Pirates released a Chinese owned tanker ship on Wednesday while a second tanker, this one a Kuwaiti owned, UAE flagged ship was released two days later. That ship had been captured in late March and was being held for a multi-million ransom. The twenty nine crew members aboard that ship are not accounted for, but reports say that they had been released along with the ship, unharmed.