Commando dies in U.S. raid in Yemen, first military op OK'd by Trump

[webfact]

Commando dies in U.S. raid in Yemen, first military op OK'd by Trump

By Mohammed Ghobari and Phil Stewart

REUTERS

 

SANAA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. commando died and three others were wounded carrying out a deadly dawn raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, in the first military operation authorized by President Donald Trump.

 

The U.S. military said it killed 14 militants in a raid on a powerful al Qaeda branch that has been a frequent target of U.S. drone strikes. Medics at the scene, however, said around 30 people, including 10 women and children, were killed.

 

The new U.S. president called the operation a success and said intelligence gathered during the operation would help the United States fight terrorism.

 

"Americans are saddened this morning with news that a life of a heroic service member has been taken in our fight against the evil of radical Islamic terrorism," Trump said in a statement.

 

The gunbattle in the rural Yakla district of al-Bayda province killed a senior leader in Yemen's al Qaeda branch, Abdulraoof al-Dhahab, along with other militants, al Qaeda said.

 

Eight-year-old Anwar al-Awlaki, the daughter of U.S.-born Yemeni preacher and al Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki, was among the children killed in the raid, according to her grandfather. Her father was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

 

"She was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours," Nasser al-Awlaki told Reuters. "Why kill children? This is the new (U.S.) administration - it's very sad, a big crime."

 

In a statement, the Pentagon did not refer to any civilian casualties, although a U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they could not be ruled out.

 

The Defence Department said the raid netted "information that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terror plots."

 

The American elite forces did not seize any militants or take any prisoners offsite, the official said, adding that the group had come under fire.

 

The Pentagon did not say how the team's one death occurred, and the U.S. military official declined to give details on the fatality.

 

A U.S. military aircraft, which was identified by the military official as an Osprey, was sent to evacuate the wounded but came under fire and had to be "intentionally destroyed in place," the Pentagon said.

 

The operation's goal was to gather intelligence on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is regarded as one of the global militant group's most dangerous branches, the official said.

 

DAWN ATTACK

 

"The operation began at dawn when a drone bombed the home of Abdulraoof al-Dhahab and then helicopters flew up and unloaded paratroopers at his house and killed everyone inside," said one resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

 

"Next, the gunmen opened fire at the U.S. soldiers who left the area, and the helicopters bombed the gunmen and a number of homes and led to a large number of casualties."

 

A Yemeni security officer and a local official corroborated that account. Fahd, a local resident who asked that only his first name be used, said several bodies remained under debris and that houses and the local mosque were damaged in the attack.

 

In a message on its official Telegram messaging account, al Qaeda mourned al-Dhahab as a "holy warrior" and other slain militants, without specifying how many of its fighters were killed.

 

American forces have not conducted any special operations in Yemen since December 2014, months before nearly two years of civil war rendered the country even more dangerous and offered al Qaeda leeway to expand into more lawless areas.

 

The United States conducted dozens of drone strikes in Yemen throughout Barack Obama's presidency to combat al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, regarded as one of the global militant group's most dangerous branches.

 

The local al Qaeda unit organised the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris in 2015 and has repeatedly tried to down U.S. airliners.

 

(Additional reporting by Mohammed El Sherif in Cairo; Writing By Noah Browning and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Susan Fenton and Jonathan Oatis)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-01-30

[Credo]

It didn't take him long to start killing our servicemen.   

 

[Colabamumbai]

Headline should read "Innocent women and children killed".

[nakhonandy]

2 hours ago, Credo said:

It didn't take him long to start killing our servicemen.   

 

This raid would have been planned long before he was in office.

[nakhonandy]

24 minutes ago, Colabamumbai said:

Headline should read "Innocent women and children killed".

Or

 

"Terrorists cause multiple deaths due to cowardly hiding behind a human shield of women and children."

 

These pieces of shit are terrorists, they have no honour and deliberately use innocents as shields or as suicide bombers. These scum murder civilians on a daily basis!

 

Soldiers do not hide behind civilians, nor do they deliberately target them!

[Ulysses G.]

4 minutes ago, nakhonandy said:

This raid would have been planned long before he was in office.

It was and Islamic militants were the ones who killed our Navy Seal.

[grumbleweed]

Quote

 around 30 people, including 10 women and children, were killed.

 

How To Win Friends And Influence People: By Donald J. Trump

 

The kids friends are gonna grow up with nothing but fondness in their hearts for the US

Still for the life of me can't understand why people become radicalized. Something in the food maybe?

 

Quote

The new U.S. president called the operation a success

Obviously: nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could be construed as failure.  This was murder of the innocents and if I was American, I'd be ashamed

 

 

[Credo]

11 minutes ago, nakhonandy said:

This raid would have been planned long before he was in office.

What part of the headline "OK'd by Trump" didn't you understand?

[impulse]

Killed 14 alleged terrorists, created 100 more by killing their innocent loved ones.

 

With that kind of math, we'd better be ready to kill billions, or figure out a different way to approach the issue(s).

[Ulysses G.]

4 minutes ago, grumbleweed said:

 

 This was murder of the innocents and if I was American, I'd be ashamed

 

 

 

Unfortunately, Islamic radicals often surround themselves with civilians. This happens all over the Middle East. It would be close to impossible to weed out the terrorists without civilian casualties and trying to do so would endanger our troops to a much greater extent. Some unfortunate things must be done for the greater good. The al Qaeda terrorists are the ones to blame.

[ilostmypassword]

First off, the USA under Obama was backing the Saudi invasion of Yemen.  The one where hospitals and other infrastructure was repeatedly bombed.  It was this invasion that weakened the Yemenis so much that Al Qaeda was able to gain a foothold in the south. So let's not just point the finger at Trump. Obama is much more responsible for this mess than Trump. At least currently. But give Trump time. I have faith he will make the situation much worse.
 

[Stargeezr]

Like almost all attacks on the terror groups, there will be other people killed, as even

these animals have wives and children, just like wolves do. They also have slaves and others who

are forced to be among them. So yes, innocent people do get killed, but that is expected, in the real

World.  This is not some reality show.

Geezer

[Ulic]

3 hours ago, Colabamumbai said:

Headline should read "Innocent women and children killed".

When you have the wives and children of al Qaeda militants living

together acting as human shields nobody is innocent. Certainly not

the women. The parents of the children are the people responsible

for putting children in harms way.

[mike324]

Its never a success when one of your own dies, as well as lives of children are lost. I would say its a complete failure even though they accomplish their mission.

[Buckwheat Flour]

4 hours ago, grumbleweed said:

 

How To Win Friends And Influence People: By Donald J. Trump

 

The kids friends are gonna grow up with nothing but fondness in their hearts for the US

Still for the life of me can't understand why people become radicalized. Something in the food maybe?

 

Obviously: nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could be construed as failure.  This was murder of the innocents and if I was American, I'd be ashamed

 

 

Well apparently you aren't, so you can simply order another pint and feel good about yourself. 

[ToS2014]

7 hours ago, Credo said:

It didn't take him long to start killing our servicemen.   

 

Seriously, you should stop drinking, eating, smoking, or otherwise that stuff that makes you say things like this.  Service men and women from allied states that die for their country should at the very least receive a RIP.  I wonder how many times you professed such disdain to the former POTUS when a service member died?  GET REAL

[NanLaew]

Not totally unexpected.

[Langsuan Man]

Just in

 

Father of Commando Killed in Yemen Refused to Meet Trump

WASHINGTON — The father of the commando killed in a Special Operations raid in Yemen last month said in an interview published this weekend that he had refused to meet with President Trump on the day his son’s body was returned home, and criticized the White House over the mission, saying, “Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation.”

“The government owes my son an investigation,” the father, William Owens, told The Miami Herald, referring to Chief Petty Officer William Owens, 36, a member of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6.

see full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/us/politics/father-of-commando-killed-in-yemen-refused-to-meet-trump.html?_r=0 

[ilostmypassword]

 

I'm sure that the same people who so vocally supported Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith who was killed in Benghazi,  will equally support William Owens in his demand for accountability.

Oddly enough I didn't see any mention of this story on boxnews or breitbart.

 

Father of Commando Killed in Yemen Criticizes Trump

The father of the commando killed in a Special Operations raid in Yemen last month said in an interview published this weekend that he had refused to meet with President Trump on the day his son’s body was returned home, and criticized the White House over the mission, saying, “Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation.”

“The government owes my son an investigation,” the father, William Owens, told The Miami Herald, referring to Chief Petty Officer William Owens, 36, a member of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6.

The death of Chief Owens on Jan. 29, in the first Special Operations raid approved by Mr. Trump, came after a chain of miscues and misjudgments that plunged the elite commandos into a ferocious 50-minute firefight with Qaeda militants in a mountainous village in central Yemen. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/us/politics/father-of-commando-killed-in-yemen-refused-to-meet-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

 

[ilostmypassword]

16 minutes ago, Langsuan Man said:

Just in

 

Father of Commando Killed in Yemen Refused to Meet Trump

WASHINGTON — The father of the commando killed in a Special Operations raid in Yemen last month said in an interview published this weekend that he had refused to meet with President Trump on the day his son’s body was returned home, and criticized the White House over the mission, saying, “Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation.”

“The government owes my son an investigation,” the father, William Owens, told The Miami Herald, referring to Chief Petty Officer William Owens, 36, a member of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6.

see full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/us/politics/father-of-commando-killed-in-yemen-refused-to-meet-trump.html?_r=0 

You beat me to it.. Oddly enough, neither Fox News or Breitbart even mentioned this story.  

Edited February 27, 2017 by ilostmypassword

[Langsuan Man]

2 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

You beat me to it by a matter of seconds. Oddly enough, neither Fox News or Breitbart even mentioned this story.

That's because they are not the opposition 

Edited February 27, 2017 by Langsuan Man

[ilostmypassword]

12 minutes ago, Langsuan Man said:

That's because they are not the opposition 

No, it's because they are not legitimate sources of news. In fox news I counted at least 10 articles about Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith who was killed in Benghazi.

As for Breitbart, on the first search page lone there were 19 articles referencing Patricia Smith.

Edited February 27, 2017 by ilostmypassword