BBC News, this is Mike Cooper.
The head of al-Qaeda in East Africa, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, has been killed. Somalia's transitional government said DNA tests confirmed his death in a
shootout
in the capital Mogadishu earlier this week. The United States has welcomed the news, as Tom Burridge reports from Washington.
There seems to be no doubt from officials in Washington that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said his death was a "significant blow" to al-Qaeda and its operations in East Africa. The coordinated bombings of two US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi were(was口误) the most deadly attack on American government assets abroad in recent years. So the killing of the man accused of planning it will be seen by the United States as an important moment in its fight against terrorism.
Turkey says more than 4,000 Syrians have fled across the border to escape violent repression by the Syrian army of anti-government protests. The Syrians are fleeing from the town of Jisr al-Shughour and the area around it. An eyewitness told the BBC what he'd seen on Friday.
"What's happened in the village: the tanks were firing from a distance. They destroyed the village, and they sent their army to calm the village. They moved from one village to another, hunting the wounded-down and killing everything, including cattle and sheep."
A BBC correspondent at the Turkish border says two official refugee camps are now