U.S. forces found, targeted and killed in a Somali desert city the senior al Qaeda operative who masterminded the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and had since spent a decade in hiding, The Washington Times has learned.Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who is one of the FBI's most-wanted terrorists, was the target of a U.S. missile strike on a residence in Dobley, a small town in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border, according to a U.S. military official who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the operation. "Al Qaeda has used this region to spill over into other parts of eastern Africa," said a U.S. counterterrorism official, also on the condition of anonymity. "Somalia at a minimum is a place of refuge but for some of al Qaeda it is a place to plot and plan future attacks."
The truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which came just nine minutes apart, killed 12 American diplomats and more than 200 Africans, and also injured 5,000 people.National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who did not reveal details regarding the operation or name its target, told reporters that "the action was to go after al Qaeda and al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists," alluding that more than one person may have been killed in the attack. "They are plotting and planning all over the world to destabilize the world, to inflict terror, and where we find them, we are going to go after them," he said.
The 34-year-old Nabhan and other al Qaeda members are thought to have been killed in the attack, according to sources who spoke to The Times. Several U.S. military officials told The Times that the attack was carried out by Tomahawk cruise missiles, although most were unsure of whether the missile was fired from a submarine or a surface ship.