Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, suspected of playing a major role in the 1998 bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was killed by Somali government forces at a checkpoint outside of Mogadishu, reports the BBC:

Mr Mohammed and a fellow militant were shot dead by Somali Transitional Federal Government forces at a checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somali security officials told AFP and Reuters.

"Our forces fired on two men who refused to stop at a roadblock. They tried to defend themselves when they were surrounded by our men," TFG commander Abdikarim Yusuf told AFP.

"We took their ID documents, one of which was a foreign passport," he said, adding that medicine, mobile phones and laptops were also found.

Somali sources told AFP that Mr Mohammed was carrying some $40,000 in cash and a South African passport bearing the name "Daniel Robinson".

Later, an official at Somalia's National Security Agency told AFP it had "confirmed by DNA tests carried out with our partners that it definitely was Fazul Abdullah".

Halima Aden, a senior Somali national security officer, also confirmed that Mr Mohammed was killed at a checkpoint, and that he had a South African passport.

In recent years, Mohammed had hooked up with the Islamist group al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda franchise in Somalia.

Mohammed was the most wanted man in African with a 5 million pound bounty on his head. That he escaped justice for so long only to be caught and killed at a random checkpoint stop shows the near impossibility of finding a determined fugitive when he disappears into the terrorist underground. Too many willing hands - both official and unofficial - who help the terrorists remain at large.

It's a reality of which we are reminded time and time again.