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Luke Somers, American Hostage, Is Killed During Rescue Attempt in Yemen 2 Hostages Killed in Yemen As U.S. Rescue Effort Fails
(35 minutes later)
SANA, Yemen — United States commandos stormed a village in southern Yemen early Saturday in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by Al Qaeda, but the raid ended badly with the kidnappers killing the American and a South African teacher held with him, United States officials said. SANA, Yemen — United States commandos stormed a village in southern Yemen early Saturday in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by Al Qaeda, but the raid ended badly with the kidnappers killing the American and a South African held with him, United States officials said.
President Obama, in a statement, said the hostages had been “murdered” by militants belonging to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula during the rescue operation, which he had approved just Friday. The hostages — Luke Somers, an American photojournalist and Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher — were killed by their captors when the militants, from Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, realized the rescue effort was underway. President Obama said he had authorized the operation, led by two dozen SEAL Team Six commandos, after concluding that Mr. Somers’s life was in “imminent danger.”
A senior United States official said that the American, Luke Somers, 33, was badly wounded when commandos reached him. By the time Mr. Somers was flown to a United States naval ship in the region, he had died from his injuries, the official said Saturday.
The other hostage was identified as Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher, who had been expected to be freed on Sunday, according to a statement posted on the website of Gift of the Givers, a disaster relief organization that had been negotiating his release.
A Yemeni tribal leader who said he was a witness to the rescue operation, in the southern province of Shabwa, said that two Qaeda militants and at least eight civilians were killed during firefights as United States commandos raided several homes.
Mr. Obama said that he authorized the rescue attempt after concluding that Mr. Somers’s life was in “imminent danger.”
“It is my highest responsibility to do everything possible to protect American citizens,” the president said in a statement. “As this and previous hostage rescue operations demonstrate, the United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located.”“It is my highest responsibility to do everything possible to protect American citizens,” the president said in a statement. “As this and previous hostage rescue operations demonstrate, the United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located.”
The raid was the second failed operation by United States forces to rescue Mr. Somers from Yemen in less than two weeks. The raid was the second failed operation by United States forces to rescue Mr. Somers from Yemen in less than two weeks. The deaths of the hostages — as well as several Yemeni civilians — seemed likely to raise new questions about the Obama administration’s reliance on military power to free its captured citizens. It also raised questions about the timing: Mr. Korkie was expected to be released by the militants on Sunday, according to a disaster relief organization that said it had successfully negotiated the teacher’s release.
The deaths of the hostages – as well as several Yemeni civilians — seemed likely to raise new questions about the Obama administration’s reliance on military power to free its captured citizens. The United States and Britain have policies against paying ransom for citizens kidnapped by terrorist groups. Most European countries do pay such ransoms. Mr. Somers had been part of a group of freelance journalists who covered the aftermath of Yemen’s 2011 uprising and had stayed on, working as a freelance editor at English-language publications and as a photojournalist. Shortly before his death, Mr. Somers’s family released a video in which they pleaded with his captors to release him, while insisting that they had no prior knowledge of the first rescue attempt. On Saturday, Mr. Somers’s sister, Lucy Somers, told The Associated Press that agents with the F.B.I. had notified the family of her brother’s death.
Speaking on the sidelines of a regional security conference in Manama, Bahrain, Maj. Gen. Ali al-Ahmadi, chief of the National Security Bureau in Yemen, said the joint operation by American and Yemeni forces to free the hostages was a race against time since the captors had vowed to kill Mr. Somers on Saturday.
“It was an effort to save him,” General Ahmadi said. “The operation happened, but as soon as the terrorists felt that they were being attacked, they killed him.”
Mr. Somers had been held with Mr. Korkie and another hostage, a British citizen. But about 24 hours before the raid, their captors had split them up, leaving only one of them — apparently Mr. Korkie — with Mr. Somers.
Mr. Somers, a freelance photographer, was abducted from a street in the Yemeni capital, Sana, in September 2013. Last month, United States commandos and Yemeni counterterrorism troops mounted a raid on a remote cave in Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia, killing seven militants and freeing eight other hostages but failing to locate Mr. Somers.
On Wednesday, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni extremist group that was holding Mr. Somers, threatened to kill him by the end of the week if its demands were not met. In the video, a leader of the group spoke of the November raid and warned the United States not to carry out any similar operations.
Mr. Somers’s family broke its silence after the video appeared, urging his captors to release him in a video of their own and insisting that they had no prior knowledge of an earlier rescue attempt. “Luke is only a photojournalist, and he is not responsible for any actions the U.S. government has taken,” said his brother, Jordan Somers.
On Saturday, Mr. Somers’s sister, Lucy Somers, told The Associated Press that agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation had notified the family of her brother’s death.
“We ask that all of Luke’s family members be allowed to mourn in peace,” she said.“We ask that all of Luke’s family members be allowed to mourn in peace,” she said.
There was no immediate word on the fate of the British hostage. In the village where the raid took place, in the southern province of Shabwah, a tribal leader, Tarek al-Daghari al-Awlaki, said the American commandos raided four houses, killing at least two militants but also eight civilians. He said that one of the civilians killed was a 70-year-old man. “The shooting caused panic,” Mr. Daghari said. “Nine of the dead are from my tribe.” He added that villagers had spent the rest of Saturday burying the dead and collecting spent bullet casings.
By Saturday, United States intelligence, including spy satellites, surveillance drones and eavesdropping technology, had pinpointed the location of Mr. Somers and Mr. Korkie to a walled compound inside the village, according to a senior military official who provided an account of the operation. American officials said they acted while facing a perilous deadline and a tiny window of opportunity. Mr. Somers’s captors said in a video statement released Wednesday that they would kill him by Saturday unless a set of unspecified demands were met.
About two dozen SEAL Team Six commandos, joined by a small number of Yemeni counterterrorism troops, swept into the village aboard V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft under cover of darkness early Saturday morning local time. The ultimatum appeared to be largely a response to the first raid, on November 25, an operation led by United States Special Operations Commandos on a cave near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia. The commandos freed eight other hostages and killed 7 militants, but found no sign of Mr. Somers.
But the SEALS faced even steeper odds than usual in this hostage rescue. The clock was ticking’ the Saturday execution deadline set by Al Qaeda loomed. The enemy — not the commandos- had essentially decided the time of a possible rescue. By Saturday, though, the United States had tracked him to a walled compound in the village in southern Yemen. American intelligence, including spy satellites, surveillance drones and eavesdropping technology, had pinpointed the location of Mr. Somers and one other Western hostage inside the compound, according to a senior military official who provided an account of the operation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations.
The commandos also feared that Al Qaeda might move the hostages once again, requiring valuable time to relocate them. America’s Special Operations forces have played a central role in global combat missions since the attacks of 9/11, the most notable being the raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. But the challenges of distance, weather, equipment failure, pinpoint intelligence — and unpredictable actions by the adversary — are ever-present.
The compound was guarded by about a half-dozen gunmen, already jittery over the prospect of a repeat of the previous week’s hostage rescue attempt by the Americans. Saturday’s mission followed a raid in November that rescued several Yemeni hostages but did not free Mr. Somers, who apparently had been moved in the days before the operation. And a July raid by Special Operations forces against an Islamic State safe house in Syria also failed to free American hostages, who likewise apparently had been relocated in advance of the mission.
Finally, the terrain of the approach to the compound was sufficiently difficult that the commandos had virtually no element of surprise, which they typically plan for and rely on. In the case of Saturday’s mission, the intelligence on Mr. Somers’s location was, indeed, accurate. It seems likely that the deadline set by the militant captors to kill him on Saturday set the clock on carrying out the mission.
“It was just very difficult to reach the hostages before the captors received warning,” said one senior United States military official who monitored the operation overnight Friday into Saturday. Officials said that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula appears to have adopted the Islamic State’s brutal tactic of threatening to kill hostages, in contrast to past practices by most of the regional terror affiliates not to kill captives, but to ransom them for large sums of money to underwrite their operations.
“It was very difficult to catch them by enough surprise to prevent them from having time to execute the hostages,” said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations. In the operation Saturday, the SEAL Team six commandos, joined by a small number of Yemeni counterterrorism troops, swept toward the village aboard V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft under cover of darkness early Saturday local time. They landed several hundred yards from the compound to try to preserve the element of surprise.
Heavily warmed and wearing night-vision goggles, the commandos breached the compound, but not before, as they had feared, the captors shot their captives in a back room of a compound building. Their effort faced steep odds. The compound was guarded by about half a dozen gunmen, already jittery about a possible repeat of the previous attempted rescue. And the approach to the compound was sufficiently difficult that the commandos had virtually no element of surprise, which they typically plan for and rely on.
The commandos gunned down all half-dozen or so militants guarding the hostages, and recovered Mr. Somers, who was badly wounded and barely alive. “It was just very difficult to reach the hostages before the captors received warning,” said the senior military official who monitored the operation overnight Friday into Saturday.
Mr. Somers was quickly moved to an Osprey, which lands and takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane, for the dash to the amphibious ship USS Makin Island, from which the rescue mission was launched. “It was very difficult to catch them by enough surprise to prevent them from having time to execute the hostages,” said the official.
The tribal leader who said he witnessed the raid, Tarek al-Daghari al-Awlaki, said that starting about 1 a.m. on Saturday, helicopters and as many as 100 troops descended on the village, Wadi Abadan. The United States forces deployed concussion grenades as they raided four houses in the village, he said. Heavily armed and wearing night-vision goggles, the commandos breached the compound and knew which building the hostages were being held. The element of surprise was lost, though, and the commandoes saw one of the militants go into a small building long enough to shoot the hostages and leave. By the time the Americans reached the building, the militants had already fled. The commandos recovered Mr. Somers and Mr. Korkie, who were gravely wounded. One of the hostages -- officials did not say which one died the helicopter ride to the USS Malkin Island, the naval ship from which the rescue mission was launched off the Yemeni coast.
“The shooting caused panic,” Mr. Daghari said. “Nine of the dead are from my tribe. Two of the dead are known to be members of Al Qaeda.” He said that two wounded civilians, a woman and a child, were taken to a nearby hospital and that Saturday was spent burying the dead and collecting spent shell casings. The other hostage died on the operating table after reaching the ship.
Mr. Somers had lived in Yemen for several years before his capture. He worked as an editor at English-language newspapers and as a freelance photojournalist. Mr. Korkie was kidnapped along with his wife, Yolande Korkie, in May 2013. American officials said they were not aware of any plans for the release of Mr. Korkie, who was kidnapped along with his wife, Yolande Korkie, in May 2013. Mrs. Korkie was released without a ransom in January after Gift of the Givers, a South African relief organization that has projects in Yemen, used its connections with tribal leaders in the area to contact the kidnappers, according to the charity’s director, Imtiaz Sooliman.
When no one stepped in to help the Korkies, Gift of the Givers, a South African relief organization that has projects in Yemen, used its connections with tribal leaders in the area to contact the kidnappers, eventually winning Mrs. Korkie’s freedom. She was released without ransom this January, according to the charity’s director, Imtiaz Sooliman. Negotiations for the release of Mr. Korkie proved more difficult, the aid group said, with Al Qaeda insisting on the payment of a ransom payment — even though the family explained that they did not have the money. The South African government refused to intercede, Mr. Sooliman said in an interview in June.
The charity thought it could also negotiate her husband’s freedom, but that proved far more difficult. For months earlier this year, the terror group continued to insist on a ransom payment — even though the family explained that they did not have the money. The South African government refused to intercede, Mr. Sooliman said in an interview in June. In the statement posted on the Gift of the Givers website, the aid group said that “Pierre was to be released by Al Qaeda tomorrow.”Yemeni leaders were preparing “the final security and logistical arrangements,” the statement continued.
In the statement posted on Saturday, Gift of the Givers said, “Pierre was to be released by Al Qaeda tomorrow.” “It is even more tragic that the words we used in a conversation with Yolande at 5:59 this morning was, ‘The wait is almost over.’“
Yemeni leaders were preparing “the final security and logistical arrangements,” the statement continued. “It is even more tragic that the words we used in a conversation with Yolande at 5:59 this morning was, ‘The wait is almost over.'”