(CNN) -- At midnight last Tuesday, two men were traveling in a black four-wheel drive through the Somali capital, Mogadishu. One was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the most wanted terrorist in Africa. Mohammed had survived more than a decade on the run, at least one attempt on his life, and a $5 million price on his head for planning the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. But his luck was about to run out in the chaos of Mogadishu, where the frontlines in the battle between the weak transitional government and al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab shift almost weekly. His vehicle headed toward a government checkpoint, possibly after taking a wrong turn. According to several accounts it tried to speed through, setting off a firefight with police.
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Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was an elusive and talented bombmaker
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U.S. officials confirmed it was Mohammed through DNA tests
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Al-Shabaab figure Musa Dheere was also killed, Kenyan officials say
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Expert says their deaths "removed the top half of the al Qaeda network's explosives expertise" in the region
The other man in the vehicle may also have been a senior al-Shabaab figure by the name of @placeholder, according to Kenyan officials.
Operationally, Mohammed was one of @placeholder's most effective figures: a bombmaker with aliases, multiple passports and disguises that enabled him to move in and out of Somalia.