Picture released by the Kenyan police in 2002 shows Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan

After interference in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has now made itself busy in Somali soil, claiming to have "likely killed" one of their most wanted men and his companions.

American sources familiar with the operation said late on Monday, that their Special Forces' helicopter-borne troops attacked a car in southern Somalia and killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who was wanted over a hotel bombing that killed 15 people and a failed missile attack on an Israeli airliner departing from Kenya's Mombassa airport in 2002.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has retrieved what it believed was the body of the 28-year-old Kenyan-born Nabhan.

Meanwhile, a senior Somali government source in Mogadishu told Reuters that the fugitive had been riding in a car with four other top foreign commanders when they were attacked near Roobow village in Barawe District, some 250 km (155 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu.

The Somali source said all five were killed in the raid. However, a BBC report quoted witnesses as saying that the troops took away two people and left two bodies in the road after the attack near the southern town of Barawe.

A local witness said the foreign commandos, who carried out the raid, were wearing French flags on the shoulders of their uniforms. But a spokesman for the French Defense Ministry, Christophe Prazuck, denied any French soldiers were involved.

Paris maintains a large military base in neighboring Djibouti.

The US military is known for launching airstrikes inside Somalia, targeting individuals that Washington considers "legitimate targets" for assassinations.

In May 2008, the US claimed its war planes killed the then-leader of al-Shabaab group and alleged al-Qaeda's top man in the country, Afghan-trained Aden Hashi Ayro, in an attack on the central town of Dusamareb.

presstv