US Strike Kills al-Qaeda Hotel Bomber in Somalia

An American helicopter strike killed a long-sought terrorist in Southern Somalia yesterday, the New York Times reports. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al-Qaeda leader operating out of Kenya, was suspected in the 2002 attack on a Kenyan resort as well as the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He was riding in a truck with leaders of Shabab, a Somali Islamist extremist group, when the US copters struck.

A senior Shabab commander tells the AP the group will seek revenge on the US. Shabab is fighting to overthrow Somalia’s teetering government, and intelligence officials say it’s drawing closer to al-Qaeda. But the main target of the strike was Nabhan. When special operations forces saw he’d moved away from civilians, they pounced. “We have been watching him for a long, long, time,” said a military official. (More Somalia stories.)