Police to scrutinize use of deadly force in car chase

WASHINGTON - Police in Washington are reviewing the use of officers' deadly force in the killing of a woman who tried to ram her car through a White House barrier, a shooting her family said was unjustified.

The investigation will reconstruct the car chase and shooting, which briefly put the U.S. Capitol on lockdown, and explore how officers dealt with the driver and whether protocols were followed.

Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer said he was confident the officers "did the best they could under the situation." Police guarding national landmarks must make fast decisions without the luxury of all the facts, especially when a threat is perceived, he said.

"This is not a routine highway or city traffic stop. It is simply not that," Gainer said Saturday. "The milieu under which we're operating at the United States Capitol and I suspect at the White House and at icons up in New York is an anti-terrorism approach, and that is a difference with a huge, huge distinction."

Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine maintained that his officers acted "heroically" to protect the community.

Police: Man who set himself ablaze on Mall dies

WASHINGTON - A man who set himself on fire on the National Mall in the U.S. capital has died of his injuries, which were so severe that authorities will have to use DNA and dental records to identify him, District of Columbia police said Saturday.

The man died Friday night at a Washington hospital where he had been airlifted, Officer Araz Alali, a police spokesman, said.

The man poured the contents of a red canister of gasoline on himself in the center portion of the mall Friday afternoon. He then set himself on fire, with passing joggers taking off their shirts to help put out the flames. Police had said he was conscious and breathing at the scene, but he was airlifted to MedStar Washington Hospital Center with life-threatening injuries.

Police are investigating the man's possible motives. Lt. Pamela Smith of the U.S. Park Police said Friday she was not aware that he had carried any signs with him or had articulated a cause.

One witness, Katy Scheflen, said she did not hear the man say anything intelligible before he set himself on fire. But she said she did notice that another man with a tripod was standing nearby and had disappeared by the time the police had arrived. It was not immediately clear whether a recording exists.

US commandos raid Somalia, nab al-Qaida leader

MOGADISHU, Somalia - In a stealthy seaside assault in Somalia and in a raid in Libya's capital, U.S. military forces on Saturday struck out against Islamic extremists who have carried out terrorist attacks in East Africa, snatching a man allegedly involved in the bombings of U.S. embassies 15 years ago but missing a man linked to last month's attack on a Nairobi shopping mall.

A U.S. Navy SEAL team slipped ashore near a southern Somalia town before the al-Qaida-linked militants rose for dawn prayers, U.S. and Somali officials told The Associated Press. The raid on a house in the town of Barawe targeted a specific al-Qaida suspect related to the mall attack, but the operation did not get its target, one current and one former U.S. military official told AP.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the raid publicly.

Within hours of the Somalia attack, relatives of a Libyan al-Qaida leader wanted for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania said he was kidnapped outside his house Saturday in Tripoli, Libya. A U.S. official said it was American forces who captured Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Anas al-Libi, who has been wanted by the U.S. for more than a decade.

The U.S. official says there have been no U.S. casualties in the Libya operation. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

- The Associated Press