Family worry for Qaeda suspect after Somalia strike

MORONI, Jan 10 (Reuters) Relatives of fugitive al Qaeda suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohammed said today they were keeping night vigils after the Comorian was targeted in a US air strike in Somalia, where Washington believes he is hiding.

Pentagon officials confirmed one air strike in southern Somalia on Monday -- the first overt U.S. military action in the country since a disastrous humanitarian mission ended in 1994.

A US intelligence official said an al Qaeda member suspected in the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania may have been killed in the attack, but did not name him.

''Rumours are circulating on the radios that Fazul would have died from the bombings in Somalia,'' a family member told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

''We had to keep a night vigil in the hope of getting a telephone call,'' he said, adding they did not even know whether Mohammed was in Somalia.

US officials have long sought Mohammed and other al Qaeda suspects Abu Talha al-Sudani of Sudan and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia.

The men were believed to be hiding among Islamist troops fleeing Ethiopian and Somali forces.

Born in the Indian Ocean archipelago, Mohammed is on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted list of terrorists with a five million dollars reward for information leading to his capture.

Abou Achraf, Comoros' national director for state security, said he had no news.

''(If Mohammed is dead), I am surprised that news of this magnitude has not been communicated to us,'' he said.

Mohammed, believed to be between 32 and 34 years old, is married to a Kenyan, a former student in the Islamic studies class he taught near Lamu on the primarily Muslim coast of Kenya.

He is said to be a master of disguise, bomb-making and forgery, carries numerous passports, speaks five languages, and has a fondness for baseball caps and casual clothes.

The United States believes hardline Islamists for years harboured the three al Qaeda suspects wanted for their role in the 1998 bombings that killed more than 200 people and/or the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel on the Kenyan coast.

Ethiopia sent troops to Somalia late last month to oust Islamists who held much of the south since June and threatened to overrun the weak government in its provincial base Baidoa.

REUTERS BDP BD2227