By Elizabeth Leafloor | RedIceCreations.com

A Libyan militant suspected by Egypt of involvement in last month’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya has been killed during a raid by Egyptian security forces in Cairo, a security official said on Thursday.

The Libyan was killed on Wednesday in a raid targeting him and other militants with suspected links to al Qaeda in Cairo’s eastern district of Nasr City, the official said. Four Egyptian militants were detained in the operation, he added.

The Libyan, identified as Karim Ahmed Essam el-Azizi, was killed by a bomb he had tried to use against the security forces during the raid, the security official said.

It was not immediately clear what role Azizi had played in the assault on the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on September 11, in which the ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed.

The State Department received plenty of warnings about deteriorating security in Libya before the deadly attack on the Benghazi consulate last month, but there was no specific warning that the compound would be a target, the New York Times reports.

But while interviews with officials and a review of State Department documents do not reveal any sign that warnings were overlooked, the security strategy for Libya appears to have been geared toward a different environment than the one that existed at the time of the attacks.

The Obama administration had received warnings that militants linked to al-Qaeda were operating training camps near Benghazi, but officials in Washington do not appear to have paid much attention to security arrangements for American personnel in the city.

"Given the large number of attacks that had occurred in Benghazi that were aimed at Western targets, it is inexplicable to me that security wasn’t increased," says Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on one of the congressional panels probing the attacks.

The secretary of state took the blame in an interview to CNN on Monday night in what will be seen as an attempt to deflect Republican attacks on Barack Obama over the affair on the eve of the second presidential debate.

"I take responsibility," she said in Lima, Peru, in her first interview about the 11 September attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans.

"I’m in charge of the state department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world [at] 275 posts. The president and the vice-president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals [who are] the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision."

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In the immediate aftermath of such events there was always "confusion" and "fog of war", Clinton said. She described an "intense, long ordeal" for staffers at the state department on the night of the attack as they struggled to find out what was happening and respond.

Clinton said her mission now was to make sure such an attack never happened again...