Somalia’s extremist Islamist militia has vowed to avenge the killing of an al-Qaeda leader in a dramatic raid by American special forces yesterday.

US commandos killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter raid on his convoy as it travelled through the Barawe district in lawless southern Somalia. US officials said that another foreign militant had been killed and two men captured.

Nabhan, a 30-year-old Kenyan, was suspected of building the truck bomb that killed 15 people at the Paradise hotel in Mombasa in 2002 shortly after a botched missile attack on an Israeli airliner that was leaving the city's airport.

He was also suspected of involvement in the simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998 in which hundreds of people were killed.

The American special forces, who arrived in four helicopters from a nearby US Navy ship to attack the al-Qaeda convoy, were said to have taken Nabhan's body with them.

“Muslims will retaliate against this unprovoked attack,” a leader of al-Shebab, an extremist movement with suspected links to al-Qaeda, told the AFP news agency today. “The United States is Islam’s known enemy and we will never expect mercy from them, nor should they expect mercy from us."

Western security agencies say that Somalia has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who use it to plot attacks in the region and beyond.

Nabhan, who has long been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, is believed to have fled to Somalia after the bombing of the Paradise, an Israeli-owned beach hotel.

The United States says that another leading al-Qaeda suspect who may be in Somalia, the Sudanese explosives expert Abu Talha al-Sudani, is believed to have orchestrated the Mombasa attacks.

The US military has launched air strikes inside Somalia in the past against individuals whom Washington blames for the 1998 embassy bombings.

In May last year, US warplanes killed Aden Hashi Ayro, the leader of al-Shebab and al-Qaeda’s top man in the country, in an attack on the central town of Dusamareb.

Under Ayro, al-Shebab had adopted Iraq-style tactics, including assassinations, roadside bombs and suicide bombings.

Several residents said that they believed French commandos had been involved in yesterday's operation in Barawe, but a defence spokesman in Paris denied any involvement.

French forces have also launched raids inside Somalia in the past to rescue French nationals held by rebels and pirates. Paris has a large military base in neighbouring Djibouti.

Last month, one of two French security advisers kidnapped by Somali insurgents in July managed to escape from his captors and fled to the presidential palace in Mogadishu. His colleague is still being held by al-Shebab, and some Somalis fear he will be killed in revenge for yesterday's raid.

* US federal agents raided homes in the New York borough of Queens yesterday in an investigation linked to an al-Qaeda terror suspect.

Details of the raids are still sketchy but the investigation was considered serious enough to warrant a briefing for key Republican and Democratic congressional leaders.

ABC News said that the raids were part of a sting operation to disrupt the plans of an al-Qaeda terror suspect whose movements were being tracked by the FBI.

"He was being watched and concern grew as he met with a group of individuals in Queens over the weekend," Pete King, a Republican Congressman for New York, told the television network. "The FBI went to court late last night for an emergency warrant to conduct the raids this morning."

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