FILE IMAGE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Three members of the US Special Operations Forces were killed and two were wounded in southwest Niger near the Mali-Niger border when a joint US-Nigerien patrol was attacked on October 4, according to The New York Times.
All five soldiers were Green Berets, said US military officials. The attack took place 120 miles north of Niamey, the capital of Niger, near the border with Mali, where militants with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have conducted cross-border raids. Niger’s troops were also believed to have suffered casualties.
The military officials added that the two wounded US troops had been evacuated to the capital, Niamey, and would soon be moved to Germany. They were described as being in a “stable condition.”
The deaths represent the first US casualties under hostile fire in a mission in which Special Operations Forces provided support and training to the Nigerien armed forces.
The United States has expanded its operations in Niger in recent years, including surveillance drone flights piloted from Niamey. The United States is also finishing construction of a base at Agadez, a central city in the Sahara, that will move flights closer to southern Libya and northern Mali. Closer proximity will allow drone operators more time to monitor remote desert stretches where militants are known to traverse.
It’s always good to hear about the death of terrorists…
Try and read it again, it was Al-Qaeda and ISIS that killed the SpecOps soldiers.
The “SpecOps” themselves are terrorists and collaborators of terrorists and it is always good news when terrorists turn their guns against one another, as it was in this case. The yankees (U$A) are pro-ISIS, pro-terrorist ROGUE state!
Idiot. Can you actually read?
Indeed! The yankee terrorists were killed by the very terrorists they were secretly collaborating to start chaos in that part of Africa.
Why can’t US soldiers stay inside their own borders? And then people say Russia is the aggressor? smh
Isn’t that part of the world considered France’s little fiefdom? I remember a time, when the French still had some pride, independence and backbone, and would take it as a personal insult for any American soldier to set foot into Francophone Africa. And now the Americans are opening their own military bases there?
How the mighty have fallen.
Only 3? Got to do better….