Official: Top Somalia al-Qaida not dead

None of the top three suspected terrorists in Somalia were killed in a U.S. airstrike this week, but Somalis with close ties to al-Qaida were killed, a senior U.S. official in the region said Thursday.

A day earlier, a Somali official had said a U.S. intelligence report had referred to the death of one of the three senior al-Qaida members believed responsible for bombing U.S. embassies in East Africa. But U.S. and Ethiopian troops in southern Somalia were still pursuing the three, the U.S. official said Thursday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.