A U.S. air strike in Somalia missed the senior al-Qaeda members it was aimed at, contrary to earlier reports that a senior member of the group had died in the attacks, a U.S. official said Thursday.
At least eight Somalis believed to have ties to al-Qaeda were killed in the air strike, but three wanted al-Qaeda members thought to be hiding in the region escaped, a top U.S. official in Kenya told the Associated Press.
On Wednesday, the Somali president's chief of staff said a U.S. intelligence report referred to the death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed in an air strike on Monday. Fazul is one of three senior militants blamed for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday that U.S. special forces and Ethiopian troops were still hunting for Fazul, one of the FBI's most-wanted terror suspects, as well as the two other suspects in the embassy bombings.
Meanwhile:
Kenyan authorities have arrested the wives and three children of two of the senior al Qaeda suspects, a Kenyan counter-terrorism source told Reuters on Thursday.
No word on how old those children are.
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