By Jennifer M. Haralambides
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa
MOGADISHU, Somalia – One of Somalia’s most wanted al-Qaeda militants was killed today when foreign special forces in helicopters attacked a car.
The wanted man is Kenya-born Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who is 28 years-old. He was wanted for the alleged building of the truck bomb that killed 15 people at a Kenyan hotel and for an attempted missile attack on an Israeli airline as it was leaving Kenya’s Mombasa airport in 2002.
A Somali government sources said the militant was in the car with other foreign insurgents from the al Shabaab rebel group when they were hit in the Barawe District, which is 150 miles south of the capital city, Mogadishu. Washington says that the al Shabaab group is an al-Qaeda’s faction in Somalia.
It is still unclear exactly who is responsible for this attack. Foreign nations have conducted air-strikes in the past to capture or kill suspected militants. A United States official claimed that the U.S. special forces carried out this attack early in the morning on Washington time, and that they believed the operation was a success. The U.S. is not new to air-strikes as U.S. missiles killed reputed al-Qaeda commander Aden Hashi Ayro last year.
Earlier reports said troops wore uniforms with French insignia and that the helicopters took off from a nearby warship flying a French flag, although a French military spokesman denied his country’s forces were in any way involved.
“There was no French operation,” said spokesman for the armed forces’ general staff, Admiral Christophe Prazuck.
Witness said that solders dragged away two men, and two bodies were left in the road after the attack.
Although Nabhan has long been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted list, the Pentagon has declined to comment on “any alleged operation in Somalia.”
For more information, please see:
Al Jazeera – ‘Foreign Troops’ Strike Shabab Car – 14 September 2009
AP – Witnesses: Foreign Troops Kill 2 in Somali Town – 14 September 2009
BBC – Foreign Troops Launch Somali Raid – 14 September 2009
Reuters – Helicopter Raid Kills Wanted Militant in Somalia – 14 September 2009
