A senior al-Qaida suspect wanted for bombing United States embassies in East Africa has been killed in a U.S. airstrike, a Somali official said Wednesday, quoting an American report, as his government called
for American ground forces to flush out any remaining extremists.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists who has evaded capture for eight years, was killed in an airstrike early Monday morning time, according to an American intelligence report passed on to the Somali authorities. He was allegedly harbored by a Somali Islamic movement that had challenged this country's Ethiopian-backed government for power.

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"I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage," Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president's chief of staff, told the AP. "One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead."

On Tuesday helicopter gunships attacked suspected al-Qaida fighters in the south, a day after U.S. forces staged airstrikes in the first offensive in the African country since 18 American soldiers were killed there in 1993, witnesses said.

In Washington, a U.S. intelligence official said the U.S. killed five to 10 people in the attack on a target in southern Somalia believed to be associated with al-Qaida. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the operation's sensitivity, said a small number of others present, perhaps four or five, were wounded.

U.S. and Ethiopian aircraft struck new targets in Somalia on Wednesday as they hunted al Qaeda suspects and defeated Islamist fighters cornered in a remote southern region, Somali officials said.

A government source and a local lawmaker said U.S. planes
struck several sites on Wednesday.

Hassan said at least three U.S. airstrikes have been launched since Monday and that more are likely. He also said local intelligence reports indicated Abdirahman Janaqow, one of the deputy leaders of the rival Islamic movement, had also been killed in the attack.

"I know it happened yesterday, it will happen today and it will happen tomorrow," Hassan said.

The Pentagon has acknowledged only the first attack and the Somali officials did not say how they distinguished between U.S. and Ethiopian planes operating in the same area.

Fazul, 32, joined al-Qaida in Afghanistan and trained there with Osama bin Laden, according to the transcript of an FBI interrogation of a known associate. He has a $5 million price on his head for allegedly planning the 1998 attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 225 people.

He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 20 kilometers north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.

If confirmed his death would be a major victory for the U.S. in its hunt for the 1998 embassy bombers.

Police at the Kenyan coastal border town of Kiunga on Monday arrested a wife of Mohammed, with her three children, according to an internal police report seen by The Associated Press. Halima Badroudine Fazul Husseine, who initially gave her name as Sofia Mohammed Ali, said she and her children aged between 4 and 15 years, fled the southern town of Kismayo, where they had lived since December, the report said. Government and Ethiopian forces took Kismayo from the Islamic movement's militia last week.

Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aideed said U.S. special forces are needed on the ground as government forces backed by Ethiopia are unable to capture the last remaining hideouts of suspected extremists.

"The only way we are going to kill or capture the surviving al-Qaida
terrorists is for U.S. special forces to go in on the ground," Aideed, a former U.S. Marine said. "They have the know-how and the right equipment to capture these people."

No American troops are yet believed to be in Somalia, Aideed said, but covert operations on the ground may be under way. "As far as we are aware they are not on the ground yet, but it is only a matter of time," he said.

Somalia's president said the U.S. attacks had his support.

So far at least 31 civilians, including a newlywed couple, have been killed in strikes, according to a Somali lawmaker. The report could not be independently verified.

In Mogadishu Wednesday, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Ethiopian troops in the south of the capital, but missed the target and hit a house, injuring two civilians, said Khadija Muhyadin. It is the second such attack since Tuesday.

U.S. Defense Department officials, speaking privately Tuesday in Washington because the department was not releasing the information, suggested the U.S. military was either planning or considering additional strikes in Somalia.

With a U.S. aircraft carrier off Somalia's coast, commanders can call in strikes. Defense Department officials said that, as of Tuesday. Three other U.S. warships were conducting anti-terror operations off Somalia's coast.

Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday that the U.S. military assault had been based on intelligence. He would not confirm any details of the strike, conducted by at least one AC-130 gunship. He would not say if any specific members of al-Qaida had been killed, or address if the operations were continuing.

Somali Islamic extremists are accused of sheltering the embassy bombing suspects, and American officials also want to make sure the militants will no longer pose a threat to Somalia's United Nations-backed transitional government.

U.S. warships have been seeking to capture al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing since December 24, when Ethiopia's military invaded in support of the Somali government and drove the Islamic militia out of the capital and toward the Kenyan border.

But in the capital some said the attacks would increase anti-American sentiment in the largely Muslim country, where people are already upset by the presence of troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population.

Leaders of Somalia's Islamic movement have vowed from their hideouts to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war, and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden's deputy has called on militants to carry out suicide attacks on Ethiopian troops.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other. The interim government was established in 2004.