US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the death of top African al-Qaeda militant¹ Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is a "significant blow" to the group.

美国国务卿希拉里·克林顿称，非洲基地组织高层领导法祖尔-阿卜杜拉-穆罕默德之死是对该组织的一个“重大的打击”。

He and another militant were killed earlier this week in a shootout（枪战，射门） with police at a checkpoint in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, officials said.

Mr Mohammed was the most wanted man in Africa, with a $5m bounty² on his head.

He was suspected of having played a key role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, which killed 224 people.

He was also accused of attacking Israeli targets on the Kenyan coast in 2002, and was recently believed to have been working with the Islamist militant group, al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia.

'Victory for the world'

Mr Mohammed was shot dead by Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces in north-western Mogadishu overnight on Tuesday, Somali security officials said.

"Our forces fired on two men who refused to stop at a roadblock（路障） . They tried to defend themselves when they were surrounded by our men," TFG commander Abdikarim Yusuf told the AFP news agency.

"We took their ID documents, one of which was a foreign passport," he said, adding that medicine, mobile phones and laptops were also found.

Somali sources told AFP that Mr Mohammed was carrying $40,000 in cash and a South African passport bearing the name Daniel Robinson.

Gen Abdikarim Yusuf Dhagabadan, Somalia's army chief, said officials at first did not know who the dead man was.

"We buried him," he told the Associated Press. "But soon after checking his documents, [we] exhumed⁴（掘出，恢复） his body and took his pictures and DNA⁵. Then we learned that he was the man wanted by the US authorities."

The general described the death as "similar to Osama bin³ Laden's", who was killed in a US commando（突击队） raid on his home in northern Pakistan on 2 May.

"It is a victory for the world. It is a victory for Somali army," he added.

A senior US government official also told the BBC that it was a "very big deal" and commended the actions of the Transitional Federal Government.

"Fazul Abdullah Mohammed's death removes one of the terrorist group's most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations," the official said.

After landing in Tanzania's capital, Dar es Salaam⁶, on the second leg of a tour of Africa, Mrs Clinton told reporters: "[His] death is a significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."

"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere - Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis, and our own embassy personnel."