A CIA official was killed last year in Kenya after a CIA official was killed in an attack targeting a key militant believed to be responsible for the killing of an American soldier, local intelligence officials told the Guardian.
The officer was stationed with Somali and U.S. special forces during an operation in the coastal village of Gandershe, 300 miles southwest of Mogadishu, and was killed in a car bomb blast minutes after al-Shabab militants launched a raid on . November, the official said.
The Somali intelligence officer, who works with a US-trained Somali “Danab” special forces unit in the lower Shabelle, said: “Our officers were supported by US officials. We flew at 2 o’clock that night. It exploded and killed an American friend and four of us before he walked into the bush. [Somali] Officers. ”
Map of Somalia
Somali officials said three senior al-Shabab commanders would be in Gandersh that night following information that the operation had been launched. Among them was Abdullahi Usman Mohammed, an expert bomb maker, believed to be responsible for many powerful devices that have killed hundreds of civilians in Somalia in recent years.
Mohammed, also known as “Engineer Ismail,” was recently arrested in the U.S. Listed by the government as a “specially designated global terrorist,” the move stabilizes any assets held within U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits Americans from doing business with them.
The list states that the 36-year-old group is a senior explosives expert, the head of al-Shabab’s media wing and a key adviser to Ahmed Deira, the movement’s leader or “rich”.
Mohammed is believed to have masterminded a series of attacks last year, including an attack on a Kenyan military base in January that killed one American soldier and two American contractors.
But the Gendershe raid was a failure. After a 40-minute firefight, U.S. And Somali forces retreated. “The operation was not successful. We didn’t get it, “said another Somali official.
Al-Shabaab sources confirmed the clash, and claimed that they had attacked the U.S. military. And besieged Somali forces after knowing in advance the offensive action. “American troops, along with the Somali army, raided the al-Shabab base in Gendarmerie. We received word that he had arrived. We were ready and a hefty gun battle ensued. Abu Mohammed, an al-Shabab commander in Lower Shabel, told the Guardian that several officers, including a CIA officer, had been killed. .
The CIA did not identify the officer, but the New York Times reported that he was a member of the CIA’s paramilitary department, special operations center and East Navy SEALs. During counter-terrorism raids, CIA officers sometimes work with military units to help identify targets or gather intelligence.
The CIA declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian.
The U.S. has suffered relatively few casualties in ongoing military operations targeting Islamist extremists in recent years, but in a bloody 2017 incident, four U.S. soldiers were killed while besieged in Niger.
That death – the U.S. has been in Africa for more than 20 years. The worst confrontation of the military – the U.S. on the continent. There was a heated debate about military involvement, and an international threat posed by terrorists there. U.S. on the continent. Africa has more than 5,000 military personnel under military command, mostly based in a main base in Djibouti on the Red Sea.
Somalia has between 50,000 and 50,000 troops, according to the latest figures. The Pentagon is expected to withdraw all or most of the US forces involved in training and counterterrorism missions in the country by January in pursuance of the president’s directives to bring home troops to the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Local officials and experts say such a move would be a catastrophic blow to local counterterrorism efforts, especially Somalia’s Danab special forces, which rely heavily on US logistics support, intelligence and training.
The U.S., regional allies and Somalis have struggled to find an effective strategy to fight al-Shabab, a ruthless and ruthless organization that emerged nearly 15 years ago. Analysts say the drone strike has killed senior commanders and disrupted the group’s activities, but has not had a major strategic impact, analysts say.
Malim Aman, the leader of the al-Shabab unit that carried out attacks and operations in Kenya and Somalia, was also listed as a global terrorist by the US State Department last month.
A recent bombing by al-Shabab on Saturday killed at least seven people at an ice cream parlor in Mogadishu and injured many more. Two weeks ago, five people were killed in another suicide attack at a restaurant near the police academy in the city.
U.S. fights extremism in Africa Years of efforts and the ability of local countries to accelerate have yielded mixed results. In most African countries, the U.S. is concerned about counterterrorism efforts. A recent official report by government observers said North African organizations such as the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al-Qaeda in ISIS-Libya had undergone a “significant decline”, but Islamist extremists continued to expand in West Africa.
Over the weekend, three large bases of the UN peacekeeping force in Mali and French troops were simultaneously attacked by rockets, while a massacre blamed on the Boko Haram group in northeastern Nigeria killed more than 110 people.
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