Yemen raid ends in death of American
S. African also executed during U.S. rescue attempt
SANAA, Yemen — U.S. commandos stormed a village in southern Yemen early Saturday in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by al-Qaida, but the raid ended in tragedy, with the kidnappers killing the American and a South African held with him, U.S. officials said.
The hostages — Luke Somers, 33, an American photojournalist, and Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher — were killed by their captors, militants from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, when they realized the rescue effort was underway. President Barack Obama said he had authorized the operation, led by about three dozen U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos, after concluding that Somers’ life was in “imminent danger.”
The president in a statement condemned Somers’ killing as a “barbaric murder,” but he did not mention the 56-year-old Korkie by name, offering condolences to the family of “a non-U.S. citizen hostage.” The South African government said it was informed that Korkie died during the mission by American special forces.
It was the second failed operation in less than two weeks by U.S. forces trying to rescue Somers from Yemen. Despite the deaths of the hostages, as well as several Yemeni civilians, Obama said his administration would not back down from using military power to free its captured citizens.
“As this and previous hostage rescue operations demonstrate, the United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelli-
gence and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located,” he said in the statement.
The raid Saturday doomed an effort by a South African aid group to free Korkie, the group said. Gift of the Givers, a South African relief organization that has projects in Yemen, said it had successfully negotiated the teacher’s release, and he had been expected to be freed by the militants today. U.S. officials said they were not aware of those arrangements.
Born in England and raised in the United States, Somers went to Yemen to teach English but ended up covering a wave of protests against the government in 2011. He photographed major events in Yemen, but he also wanted to capture the concerns of regular people, friends said.
“He was so dedicated to the story of the Yemeni people,” said Alex Potter, who lived in his building in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital.
While some freelance journalists moved on from Yemen, Somers stayed behind, working as a freelance editor at English-language publications.
He was kidnapped in September 2013 while walking on a street in Sanaa.
Shortly before his kidnapping, Somers was making plans to leave Yemen, with plans to return, according to an email published by the BBC.
“It’s an emptying thought, [imagining] rooting yourself so firmly in a place, only to never return,” Somers wrote in the email. “So return I should, return I must.”
On Saturday, Somers’ sister, Lucy Somers, said agents with the FBI 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.
Before her brother’s death, Lucy Somers released an online video last week describing him as a romantic who “always believes the best in people.” She ended with the plea: “Please let him live.”
His mother also spoke, pleading for mercy.
“Give us an opportunity to see our Luke again,” she said. “He is all that we have.”
Obama said Somers wanted to use his photographic images to convey the lives of Yemenis to outsiders and had gone to the country “in peace and was held against his will and threatened by a despicable terrorist organization.”
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said during a news conference in Afghanistan that the rescue operation was “extremely well executed” but was complicated and risky.
Vice President Joe Biden said the U.S. “will be relentless in our efforts to bring to justice” those responsible for a “despicable crime.”
FACING A DEADLINE
In the village where the raid took place, in the southern province of Shabwah, a tribal leader, Tarek al-Daghari al-Awlaki, said the U.S. commandos raided four houses, killing at least two militants but also eight civilians. He said one of the civilians killed was a 70-year-old man.
“The shooting caused panic,” al-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.
U.S. officials said they acted while facing a perilous deadline and a tiny window of opportunity. Somers’ captors said in a video statement released last week that they would kill him by Saturday unless a set of unspecified demands were met.
By Thursday evening, the Pentagon had sent the White House a plan, which Obama approved the next day. Officials alerted Yemeni Pres- ident Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who gave his support.
Yemen’s highest security body, the Supreme Security Committee, issued a statement Saturday acknowledging that the country’s forces had carried out the raid with “American friends.” The committee said all the militants holding the hostages were killed in the operation.
No American forces were killed or suffered serious injuries in the raid. Yemen’s government said four of its forces were wounded.
The ultimatum appeared to be largely a response to
By Thursday evening, the Pentagon had sent the White House a plan, which Obama approved the next day. Officials alerted Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who gave his support.
the first raid, on Nov. 25, an operation led by U.S. Special Operations commandos on a cave near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia. The commandos freed eight hostages and killed seven militants but found no sign of Somers, who apparently had been moved in the days before the operation.
By Saturday, the United States had tracked him to a walled compound in the village in southern Yemen. U.S. intelligence, including spy satellites, surveillance drones and eavesdropping technology, had pinpointed the location of 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 the condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations.
America’s Special Operations forces have played a central role in global combat missions since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, most notably in the raid into Pakistan in 2011 that killed Osama bin Laden.
A raid in July by Special Operations forces against an Islamic State safe house in Syria also failed to free American hostages, who apparently had been relocated.
Al-Qaida has largely turned away from executing hostages in recent years in favor of negotiating ransoms — a contrast to the frequent executions carried out by the Islamic State. When they have faced military raids, al-Qaida militants have executed hostages.
About 40 from American Special Operations were involved in the rescue attempt, U.S. officials said.
The operation Saturday began about 1 a.m. The SEAL Team 6 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.
They landed several hundred yards from the compound in an effort to remain undetected.
The compound, which was in a remote, hilly area surrounded by scrub, was guarded by about half a dozen gunmen, already jittery about a possible repeat of the previous rescue attempt. The approach to the compound was difficult enough that the commandos had virtually no element of surprise.
When they were about 100 yards away, a barking dog betrayed their presence, the U.S. officials said.
“It was very difficult to catch them by enough surprise to prevent them from having time to execute the hostages,” said the senior military official, who monitored the operation.
Heavily armed and wearing night-vision goggles, the commandos breached the compound and knew in which building the hostages were being held. But their advantage was already lost: The commandos 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 fled. The commandos found Somers and Korkie, who were both gravely wounded.
Korkie died aboard a rescue aircraft, according to officials who provided details of the operation. Somers survived to reach a nearby Navy ship, the USS Makin Island, where he died while undergoing surgery.
The raid was over in about 30 minutes.
Officials said that based on where Somers and Korkie were being held, there was no possibility that they were struck by American gunfire.
Korkie, a former track coach who worked in 1988 and 1989 with South African Olympian Zola Budd, was kidnapped in May 2013 along with his wife, Yolande, as they were working for a charity in the southern Yemeni province of Taiz.
Yolande Korkie was released without a ransom in January after Gift of the Givers used its connections with tribal leaders in the area to contact the kidnappers, according to the charity’s director, Imtiaz Sooliman.
However, al-Qaida militants demanded a $3 million ransom for Korkie’s release, according to those close to the negotiations. Although the ransom demand was dropped, the kidnappers demanded a “facilitation fee,” said the aid group. The undisclosed amount was raised by Korkie’s family and friends, according to the South African Press Agency.
On Nov. 26, an agreement was reached for him to be released, and he was to be freed today, Sooliman said.
Speaking Saturday, Sooliman said: “You can’t blame anybody for this. You can’t accuse or blame them [the U.S. forces]. It’s just unfortunate that it happened.”
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.
“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.’”
Information for this article was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Eric Schmitt, Rukimini Callimachi, Saeed Al-Batati, Michael Gordon and Emma G. Fitzsimmons of The New York Times; by Julie Pace, Ahmed Al-Haj, Maamoun Youssef, Sarah El Deeb, Maggie Michael, Jon Gambrell, Robert Burns, Ken Dilanian, Adam Schreck, Fay Abuelgasim, Andrew Meldrum, Yusof Abdul-Rahman and staff members of The Associated Press; by Carter Dougherty, Mike Dorning Mohammed Hatem, Deema Almashabi, John Walcott, Tony Capaccio and Vernon Wessels of Bloomberg News; and by Missy Ryan, Karen DeYoung and Adam Goldman of The Washington Post.