Hostages killed in Yemen rescue attempt

KABUL, Afghanistan – In the predawn hours Saturday, a team of elite U.S. commandos stepped off a tilt-rotor aircraft into the desolation of central Yemen, intent on rescuing American photojournalist Luke Somers from his militant captors.

The team of 40 Special Operations forces trudged more than 6 miles amid hills and scrub brush to a heavily fortified compound in Shabwa province that U.S. intelligence specialists had pinpointed as the location where Somers was being held.

The mission was an urgent one: The al-Qaida affiliate that was holding Somers, 33, threatened last week to kill him if unspecified demands were not met by the Obama administration.

“We had good intelligence he would be killed the next day,” said a Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It was either act now or take the risk. And we weren’t going to let the deadline pass.”

With officials in Washington watching in real-time, the troops drew near the remote compound under the cover of darkness, according to an account provided by Defense officials.

Their surprise attack was foiled, however, by a militant who was outside, a Defense official said. The extremists began firing wildly, sparking an intense firefight. During the next 10 minutes or so, U.S. forces killed six militants, but one was seen going into the building where Somers and another hostage were held, and exited soon after.

While inside, the militant had shot the captives, a senior Pentagon official said. The special operators, who quickly overcame the extremists, went inside to find Somers seriously wounded, as was the other hostage, South African teacher Pierre Korkie, whose wife had been told he was just a day from being freed.

“There is zero possibility that the hostages were victims of crossfire,” the senior official said. “This was an execution.”

The forces, after about half an hour in the compound, moved the wounded hostages to the aircraft and flew them to an waiting naval ship, the Makin Island, off the coast of Yemen. Surgeons and medics worked on the two men on the way to the ship, but one died en route and the other on the operating table, according to the officials.

The failed raid was the second attempt in 10 days by U.S. special forces to save Somers. Thursday, the Pentagon acknowledged a Nov. 25 operation that freed eight captives – including citizens of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Ethiopia – but Somers and several other foreigners were apparently moved days before it took place, Yemeni officials said.

That earlier attempt ultimately may have put Somers’ life in jeopardy. In the video of him obtained last week, militants warn against “any other foolish action” by Americans, and Somers pleads to be freed by whatever means possible.

Somers’ death comes after the beheadings of other American journalists in recent months by Islamic State militants who have captured large parts of Iraq and Syria. Another failed rescue attempt was made last summer in search of one of those victims, Steven Sotloff.

“There is no excuse for the brutality and inhumanity of groups like AQAP (al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” said Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, using another name for the Islamic State group. “We will relentlessly seek to protect our citizens and punish those who threaten us.”

In releasing a video statement vowing to kill Somers if their demands were not met, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula seemed to be taking a page from Islamic State’s playbook. While the al-Qaida group has a history of kidnapping Westerners, experts say it’s plausible that the attention generated by Islamic State’s videos of beheadings might have added impetus to follow suit.

“There’s certainly a good deal of contagion involved in all of these insurgencies and terrorist organizations,” said James Dobbins, a senior fellow and security expert at Rand Corp. “There’s a lot of imitation, a lot of back-and-forth, and it’s more intense now because of the Internet.”

Yet the failed attempt to rescue Somers from extremists has renewed questions about American intelligence and special forces capabilities, given that there have been other unsuccessful efforts to extract hostages and that the U.S. position not to negotiate with or pay ransoms narrows its options.

Korkie’s death was made all the more tragic by the militants’ agreement to release him today, according to Gift of the Givers, a South African humanitarian group.

“ ‘The wait is almost over,’ ” the group had told his wife, its founder said in a statement. The al-Qaida group kidnapped Korkie and his wife, Yolande, a humanitarian worker, last year. She was freed in January without payment of ransom, the aid organization said, though it would not comment on whether ransom was involved in the negotiations to release Pierre Korkie. The charity said al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula had demanded about $3 million in exchange for letting him go before he was killed in the failed rescue operation.

Experts say such missions are notoriously difficult, noting that it took years for the U.S. to find Osama bin Laden.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said in Somers’ case, “I was actually heartened and impressed that we had this kind of intelligence that we could mount a credible rescue attempt. It didn’t save Mr. Somers, but there were hostages there – and Western hostages,” he said of the earlier raid that freed eight people. “This has to also have, at least, a chilling effect on terrorist leaders.”

President Barack Obama and the Yemeni government approved the latest attempt to rescue Somers that morning, a Defense official said on condition of anonymity. Time to plan the operation was short, but “thorough,” the official said.

“The callous disregard for Luke’s life is more proof of the depths of AQAP’s depravity, and further reason why the world must never cease in seeking to defeat their evil ideology,” Obama said in a statement. He also vowed that those who harm U.S. citizens will feel “the long arm of American justice.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Afghanistan that the mission was “extremely well-executed,” but that it carried challenges that ultimately couldn’t be overcome.

There were no injuries to any of the U.S. special operators in the rescue attempt and no casualties to Yemeni civilians, the senior official said.