{"id":37853,"date":"2013-10-05T17:30:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-05T21:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=37853"},"modified":"2013-10-05T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-05T21:32:09","slug":"seals-raid-on-al-shabbab-leader-in-somalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37853","title":{"rendered":"SEALs’ raid on al-Shabbab leader in Somalia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/a> reports that SEALs staged a raid on the sea-side villa of a senior leader of al-Shabbab which executed the raid on the Kenyan Westgate Mall a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

The SEAL team stealthily approached the beachfront house by sea, firing on the unidentified target in a predawn gunbattle that was the most significant raid by American troops on Somali soil since commandos killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Qaeda mastermind, near the same town four years ago.<\/p>\n

The Shabab leader was believed to have been killed in the firefight, but the SEALS were forced to withdraw before that could be confirmed, a senior American official said. Such operations by American forces are rare because they carry a high risk, and indicate that the target was considered a high priority. Baraawe, a small port town south of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, is known as a gathering place for the Shabab\u2019s foreign fighters. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know how smart a terror leader is if he has a “seaside villa” knowing that SEALs like to approach by sea.<\/p>\n

There was some confusion as to exactly what happened before sunrise on Saturday. Witnesses described the SEAL team using silencers in the initial attack, but a loud firefight afterward. Before confirmation that an American SEAL team was behind the attack, a Shabab spokesman said British and Turkish forces were involved, which both countries immediately denied. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In related news, NBC<\/a> says that the team of terrorists who attacked the Westgate Mall could have been much smaller than originally reported;<\/p>\n

Based on reviews of security video from inside the mall, only four attackers have so far been seen.<\/p>\n

Initial reports placed the size of the team that held off authorities for three days at nine to 12.<\/p>\n

Still more attackers may be identified in addition to the four.<\/p>\n

Two separate sources now say that the investigation shows no evidence of any white woman or any woman at all among the attackers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times reports that SEALs staged a raid on the sea-side villa of a … SEALs’ raid on al-Shabbab leader in Somalia<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}