Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Al Qaeda operative, killed in Somalia: police

The head of Al Qaeda in East Africa, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, was reportedly killed in the capital of Somalia earlier this week, police told news organizations.

Abdullah was suspected of being involved in the 1988 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed more than 220 and injured 5,000. The attack made Abdullah the most wanted man in Africa, and the United States put a $5 million bounty on his head, BBC reports.

Police said they killed him and another man Wednesday at a roadblock in Mogadishu and then buried his corpse, Reuters reports.

"We have confirmed he was killed by our police at a control checkpoint this week," Halima Aden, a senior national security officer, told Reuters.

Kenya's police chief confirmed to AFP the report that Abdullah was dead.

Abdullah and another man reportedly refused to stop at a roadblock, and Somali forces then fired on them. Somali forces then seized from the men a fake South African passport, medicine, mobile phones and a laptop.

BBC reports that the two bodies were collected by the Somali National Security Agency and given to U.S. authorities for DNA testing.

The Al Qaeda operative was born in the Comoros islands in the early 1970s and is believed to have joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s, it states. It is believed Al Qaeda put him in charge of East Africa operations in 2002.

Meanwhile, Somali leaders agreed Thursday to extend the transitional government for a year but also dismiss the popular prime minister.

Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991, and the country has been mired in civil war for the past 20 years.