hite Widow Samantha Lewthwaite: Net closing in as hit squads hunt down 'world's most wanted terrorists'

The net is closing in on the White Widow as elite international hit squads step up the hunt for “the world’s most wanted terrorists”.


Security ­agencies have a dozen extremists in their sights and British fugitive Samantha Lewthwaite is believed to be “high on the list”.
Two senior terror chiefs were the first targets in special forces raids in Africa on Saturday. One operation succeeded and the other failed.
The top-secret mission was given the go-ahead after last month’s terror attack in a Nairobi shopping centre which left at least 67 people dead, including six Britons.
Mum-of-four Lewthwaite, 29, is linked with the gun massacre.
A security source said: “This is a major turning point in the global war on terror.
“International security ­agencies are pooling resources like never before; this is undeniably the biggest intelligence operation for more than a decade.
“The hunt for the world’s most wanted terrorists is on.”
In Saturday’s first raid, al-Qaeda’s Anas al-Liby, 49, was seized by US special forces – backed by British ­intelligence – in Libyan capital Tripoli.

Al-Liby has been on the FBI’s most wanted list for more than a decade with a £3million bounty on his head.
He was suspected of being one of the masterminds behind the 1998 US embassy attacks, which killed more than 220 people in Kenya and Tanzania.

MI6 agents are also understood to have helped US forces in a pre-dawn raid in the Somali town of Barawe.
Navy Seal Team Six, which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011, was ordered to “take out” Ahmed Abdi Godane.
 

He is the leader of al-Shabaab – the terror cell behind the Nairobi attack.
But while al-Liby is in custody, the Somali ­operation was abandoned after the Seal team came under heavy fire from fighters.
British spooks at GCHQ helped pinpoint the whereabouts of the terrorists following analysis of radio communications picked up in the region.
It is also understood a Royal Navy submarine in the area was on standby to fire missiles if the raid went wrong.
Despite US helicopters being called in to assist in the fight, the group was forced to abort its mission.
Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab claimed foreign forces had landed on the beach and launched an assault.
He said militants retaliated with guns and grenades.

Police said seven people were killed. Sources claim two al-Shabaab militants from Sudan and Sweden were among them.
The Sudanese man was named locally as Awab al-Uqba – a trainer for al-Shabaab’s intelligence unit, Amniyat.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said al-Liby was “lawfully detained under the law of war” with the Libyan government’s full knowledge.
However, Libya called the operation a “kidnapping” and has requested an explanation from Washington.
In further developments, security sources have confirmed “offers are being put on the table” to known militants across Africa and the Middle East in return for “information leading to Lewthwaite’s capture”.

Al-Shabaab claimed Lewthwaite – widow of 7/7 suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay – was involved in the massacre at the Westgate shopping mall.
MI6, the CIA and Israeli security service Mossad – have since been working “round the clock” to find her .
Lewthwaite, of Aylesbury, Bucks, has been on the run for 20 months after being charged in 2011 with plotting to blow up Kenyan beach resorts with another Briton, Jermaine Grant.
Now her boss Godane has escaped capture it is feared al-Shabaab could bring forward plans for another terror attack in retaliation.
The bearded militant has a £5million bounty on his head.

A senior security source said: “The timing of the raids following the Westgate terror should send a very strong message that this is a significant moment in the war on terror."These missions would not have taken place without the most detailed consideration, factoring in all of the outcomes.

“However, the failure to capture the target will be concern to both the US and the world while acting as an important propaganda tool for al-Shabaab.
“A known terrorist is once again on the loose and the fear will be that plans of an attack could be brought forward.”
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Lewthwaite was planning to murder “disbelievers” at least two years ago.
diary found by Kenyan police in a raid at a house she rented in Mombasa also revealed she was grooming her eldest children to follow in their suicide bomber dad Lindsay’s footsteps.
Abdullah, nine, and Ruqayyah, eight, have the Arabic middle names Shaheed and Shahidah – the male and female forms of the word martyr.