Fifteen people, some of them Israelis, were killed in the bombing of Paradise Hotel in 2002

Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was killed along with at least one other fighter from the group when their car came under attack on Monday.

The US official, who did not want to be named, said the body of Nabhan, 28, was in US hands.

Nabhan, born in Kenya, was high on the FBI's list of most wanted "terror" suspects.

US special forces are believed to have attacked the car carrying Nabhan, also described as an al-Qaeda operative, in Barawe district.

An American official told the broadcaster ABC that a US navy ship had been in the area to monitor the situation and to provide assistance.

The US says the al-Shabab group, which is fighting against the Somali government, has links to al-Qaeda.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, had said earlier on Monday that he would not comment on the operation or on any potential US involvement.

Kenya attacks

Nabhan is believed to have owned the lorry used for the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel on Kenya's coast that killed 15 people. He was also wanted over a failed attack on an Israeli airplane leaving Mombasa airport the same year.

He is thought to have fled to Somalia afterwards.

Several residents in Barawe said Nabhan had been killed in the Barawe attack, along with at least one other person.

Abdi Ahmed, a resident, said six helicopters flew over the village before two of them opened fire. "White" foreign soldiers in military uniforms then got out and left with two wounded men, he said.

Al-Shabab confirmed that the attack had taken place, but refused to give more details.

Earlier reports suggested that the helicopters were French, but the French military denied its troops had been involved.

Barawe district, about 250km south of the capital, Mogadishu, is controlled by al-Shabab fighters.

Political solution

Commenting on the Somalian conflict, Ernst Jan Hogendoorn, Horn of Africa project director at the International Crisis Group, said that the solution to Somalia's problems will have to be a political one.

"We feel … that there are many moderate elements in al-Shabab that could be brought into the government, he said from Nairobi.

"It is unclear how deep the connections between al-Qaeda and al-Shabab are. Although this may be an important strike against a particular individual, in the long run this is not the way the war on terror is going to be won in Somalia."

Noting that the US had been looking for Nabhan for some time, Abdi Ismail Samatar, a professor at the University of Minnesota, said: "Obama's policy in Somalia has been more aggressive despite the fact that the president, in his address to the Muslim world in Cairo, said that the US does not intend to intervene in the local political affairs of other countries.

"But the government, since January this year has been deeply interventionist.

"[It] has been deeply involved in Somalia and has been in fact more aggressive than the Bush administration to the point where they sent two arms shipments to the Transitional Federal Government, which the Bush administration never did."

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