Somali anger at al-Qaeda killing: Update 1

Earlier this week, U.S. Special Forces killed a man U.S. intelligence said was the link between an Islamic militia in Somalia and al-Qaida in Pakistan. But he also had a connection to the U.S. that has not been reported: He was a senior instructor for new al-Shabab recruits, including a handful of young Somali-Americans from Minneapolis.

When FBI agents capture a terrorism suspect, one of the first things they do is pull out mug shots so they can try to identify other possible members of al-Qaida. And that's exactly what happened earlier this year — when some of the young Somali-Americans who trained in Somalia returned to Minneapolis.

Intelligence officials tell NPR that when agents flipped to a picture of one al-Qaida operative, several of the young men said they recognized him. His name was Salah Ali Nabhan. He's the man American commandos killed in a daylight raid in southern Somalia on Monday.

The Minneapolis boys said they recognized him because he had been one of their trainers in the camps in Somalia — on loan from al-Qaida to boost the training operations of a Somali militia called al-Shabab.

"Usually people like Nabhan are jacks of all trade," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "They are particularly skilled, as Nabhan was, in the fabrication of vehicular bombs, particularly ones used for suicide attacks."

Vehicular bombs, or car bombs, are what landed Nabhan on the FBI's most wanted list. Officials say he rigged up a car bomb in 2002 to blow up an Israeli-owned resort in Kenya, and Americans have been hunting for him for years. A ringleader of an al-Qaida cell in Kenya, he may also have played a role in the East Africa embassy attacks in 1998.