Wanted Al-Qaeda terrorist Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was killed Monday in a United States special forces air strike in southern Somalia, local civilians have reported. Nabhan is wanted for multiple terrorist attacks, including a 2002 hotel bombing and attempted attack on an airplane that targeted Israeli citizens.
Nabhan was wanted by the United States FBI for both the 2002 attacks and possible involvement in 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in which hundreds of people were killed.
He was rumored to have fled Kenya for Somalia as early as 2002. In early 2008 the U.S. bombed an Al-Qaeda training camp in southern Somalia; analysts suggested that Nabhan was the primary target of the strike.
In 2002, terrorists in Mombasa, Kenya, targeted the Paradise Hotel – the only Israeli-owned hotel in the region, and a popular destination for Israeli tourists. A suicide bomber drove into the building, murdering 13 people, three of them Israelis.
The Israeli victims were tour guide Albert de Havila of Raanana and young brothers Dvir and Noy Anter, 14 and 12, of Ariel. The Anter brothers were survived by their parents and an eight-year-old sister; their mother and sister were wounded in the blast.
At approximately the same time as the bombing, terrorists fired two Strela 2 surface-to-air missiles at an Israeli charter plane owned by Arkia Airlines. The missiles missed the aircraft, which was later rumored to have deployed a defense system meant to confuse the missiles' seeker systems.
While a Lebanese group calling itself the Army of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack, U.S. and Israeli experts believe that the attack was linked to Al-Qaeda. The Somalia-based terrorist group Al-Ittihad Al-Islami, which has ties to Al-Qaeda, was named as a possible perpetrator of the attack.