Yeah, but if it’s a common occurrence around the area, why would the local populace be surprised? The tone of the article suggested that the writer was uninformed about this “common” event.
The purpose isn’t to “inform locals”, it’s to get out on the wire, where the inference to everyone else who picks it up over the next few days will be “OMG, [man, Americans, etc...] have screwed something up again by [insert current liberal hand wringing subject here].