Overnight, two hostages including an American photojournalist, 33-year-old Luke Sommers, who was held for more than a year by al Qaeda's Yemen branch, as well as a South African teacher, Pierre Korkie, were killed in a botched rescue attempt by US special operations forces. This was the second rescue attempt in as many weeks. According to the WSJ [5], Luke Somers, 33 years old, was killed by militants, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday. Several members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, were also killed in the raid.
[6]
South African teacher Pierre Korkie was also killed in the raid, according to a charity that had been trying to help negotiate his release.
The ill-advised raid had been ordered by President Barack Obama because “there were compelling reasons to believe Mr. Somers’ life was in imminent danger” according to outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who will be all the more eager to leave the Pentagon after this latest failure which will conclude an administrative career of one debacle after another.
“Both Mr. Somers and a second non-U.S. citizen hostage were murdered by the AQAP terrorists during the course of the operation,” Mr. Hagel said in a statement.
A U.S. official said Mr. Somers was shot by militants as the raid unfolded and wasn’t killed in crossfire. It wasn’t immediately clear where Mr. Somers’s remains were.
The raid took place after AQAP had warned that they would kill Mr. Somers if U.S. forces attempted another “foolish” rescue attempt, in a video statement released Thursday. In the video, an AQAP commander threatened to kill Mr. Somers by the end of the week if their unspecified demands weren’t met.
AQAP was true to its word: Somers was indeed killed after US forces attempted another "foolish" rescue attempt. At least al Qaeda gives out fair warnings.
According to CBS News [7], the raid was carried out by U.S. Navy SEALs who flew into Yemen on a V-22 Osprey aircraft and hiked to the location where Somers was being held.
CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata reports that a Defense Department official said Somers was apparently shot by his captors during the raid. Something must have alerted Somers' captors of the raid, giving them enough time to shoot Somers and Korkie, D'Agata reports.
When the SEALs reached Somers he was alive but had been badly wounded and died of his wounds by the time he reached a U.S. Navy ship, D'Agata reports. There were no U.S. military casualties, D'Agata reports.
Some background on the killed hostage:
Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 as he left a supermarket in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, said Fakhri al-Arashi, chief editor of the National Yemen, where Somers worked as a copy editor and a freelance photographer during the 2011 uprising in Yemen.
Somers, who was born in Britain, earned a bachelor's degree in creative writing while attending Beloit College in Wisconsin from 2004 through 2007. "He really wanted to understand the world," said Shawn Gillen, an English professor and chairman of Beloit College's journalism program who had Gillen as a student.
Fuad Al Kadas, who called Somers one of his best friends, said Somers spent time in Egypt before finding work in Yemen. Somers started teaching English at a Yemen school but quickly established himself as a one of the few foreign photographers in the country, he said.
"He is a great man with a kind heart who really loves the Yemeni people and the country," Al Kadas wrote in an email from Yemen. He said he last saw Somers the day before he was kidnapped.
"He was so dedicated in trying to help change Yemen's future, to do good things for the people that he didn't leave the country his entire time here," Al Kadas wrote.
This was the second attempt to rescue Somers: In a statement Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby acknowledged for the first time that a mysterious U.S. raid last month had sought to rescue Somers but that he turned out not to be at the site. The U.S. considers Yemen's al Qaeda branch to be the world's most dangerous arm of the group as it has been linked to several failed attacks on the U.S. homeland.
Kirby did not elaborate on the joint U.S-Yemeni operation to free Somers, saying details remained classified. However, officials have said the raid targeted a remote al Qaeda safe haven in a desert region near the Saudi border. Eight captives - including Yemenis, a Saudi and an Ethiopian - were freed. Somers, a Briton and four others had been moved days earlier.
More:
Lucy Somers, the photojournalist's sister, told The Associated Press that she and her father learned of her 33-year-old brother's death from FBI agents at 12 a.m. EST Saturday.
"We ask that all of Luke's family members be allowed to mourn in peace," Lucy Somers said from London.
Yemen's national security chief, Maj. Gen. Ali al-Ahmadi, said the militants planned to kill Luke Somers on Saturday.
"Al Qaeda promised to conduct the execution (of Somers) today so there was an attempt to save them but unfortunately they shot the hostage before or during the attack," al-Ahmadi said at a conference in Manama, Bahrain. "He was freed but unfortunately he was dead."
The news of the failed rescue comes after a suspected U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed nine alleged al Qaeda militants early Saturday, a Yemeni security official told the AP before news of Somers' death. The drone struck at dawn in Yemen's southern Shabwa province, hitting a suspected militant hideout, the official said. The official did not elaborate and spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to brief journalists.
Needless to say, the strikes are despised by many in Yemen due to civilian casualties, legitimizing for many the attacks on American interests.
It was not clear as of this writing how many innocent Yemeni people were killed in the latest US strike in Yemen, but what is clear is that in a world in which operators of remote-control fighter jets kill thousands of innocent people half way around the globe with absolute impunity, tragic incidents such as this one will certainly continue.
