CIA officer killed in Somalia was part of raid on top Al-Shabaab bomb maker: report
The unnamed officer was working as part of the CIA’s paramilitary branch [Getty]
A CIA officer killed in Somalia last month lost his life during a mission against an Al-Shabaab militant suspected of being behind a deadly attack in Kenya last year, The Guardian revealed on Thursday.
The unnamed officer was taking part in a raid alongside Somali and US special forces in the coastal town of Gendershe when Al-Shabaab militants detonated a car bomb, according to Somali intelligence officials who spoke to the London-based newspaper.
“Our officers were supported by the US officers. We flew at 2am that night. The soldiers disembarked from the chopper and went on foot in the bush before a huge explosion went off and killed the American friend and four of our [Somali] officers,” an intelligence official was quoted as saying.
Somali officials said the raid targeted several high-ranking Al-Shabaab leaders, including Abdullahi Osman Mohamed.
According to the US government’s terror designation of Mohamed, the 36-year-old is Al-Shabab’s top explosives expert, media head and aide to the group’s ’emir’, Ahmed Diriye.
The abortive raid on Mohamed ended after a a 40-minute firefight, according to another Somali intelligence source.
The CIA officer’s death was first reported last week by The New York Times, which identified the officer as a veteran member of the intelligence agency’s Special Activities Center, a paramilitary branch that carries out some of the US intelligence agency’s most dangerous tasks.
The CIA has not commented publicly on the death.
Washington has some 700 troops deployed in Somalia, training Somali forces and conducting counter-terrorism raids against Al-Shabaab, which Washington designated as a terror movement in 2008.
Al-Shabaab is estimated to have between 5,000 and 9,000 fighters and have vowed to overthrow the Somali government, which is supported by some 20,000 troops from the African Union.
The outgoing administration of President Donald Trump is considering withdrawing all US forces from Somalia by the time he leaves office in January, the paper added.
At the start of his term, Trump gave the Pentagon a freer hand to expand their operations, with both air strikes and ground raids, in the war-ravaged African country.
But an official report released in February said that “despite continued US air strikes in Somalia and US assistance to African partner forces, Al-Shabaab appears to be a growing threat that aspires to strike the US homeland”.
Source:english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news