Free Republic

The suspected al-Qaida figure nabbed by U.S. special forces in a dramatic operation in the Libyan capital had been living freely in his homeland after his return there three years ago, his family said. Libya’s government asked for an explanation Sunday from the United States after the Americans seized Abu Anas al-Libi from a Tripoli street outside his home and whisked him out of the country. The raid that captured al-Libi was one of two dramatic American raids on the ground in African countries targeting suspected terrorists on Saturday. In Somalia, a Navy SEAL team swam ashore early the same...

In a stealthy seaside assault in Somalia, U.S. special forces on Saturday struck out against Islamic extremists who have carried out terrorist attacks in East Africa, before eventually aborting the mission to capture a leading terrorist suspect linked to last month's Nairobi shopping mall attack after a fierce firefight. A U.S. Navy SEAL team swam ashore near a town in southern Somalia before militants of the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabab rose for dawn prayers. The raid on a house in the town of Barawe targeted a specific al-Qaeda suspect related to the mall attack, but the operation did not get...

WASHINGTON -- Navy SEALs carried out a predawn raid Saturday against a suspected Shabab leader in Somalia who is believed to have planned the group's deadly attack last month on a shopping mall in Kenya, two U.S. officials said. Also Saturday, a Libyan Al Qaeda leader wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa was reportedly captured in Tripoli, Libya. A U.S. official said the Somalia raid involved commandos storming a beachfront house in a town not far from Mogadishu. It remained unclear whether the target of the raid was killed or even was...

American officials have announced the capture of an unidentified official of the al Shabab terrorist organization The terrorist was seized in an early morning raid at the beachfront house in Baraawe, Somalia where al Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was last known to be living Al Shabab confirmed the attack, saying one of their fighters had been killed but that they had pushed back the SEALs American officials would not say whether the official had been taken dead or alive A Navy SEAL team has launched a daring raid on Somalia and captured a top terror leader linked to last...

Unidentified foreign forces have launched a night-time raid on a militant base in the south Somali town of Barawe from the sea, reports say. A spokesman for the al-Shabab Islamist group told Reuters news agency that one of its fighters had been killed during the raid....... Al-Shabab claimed responsibility last month for the deadly attack on a Kenyan shopping mall..... According to the Somali news website Midnimo, two helicopters were also involved in the raid..... "Westerners in boats attacked our base as Barawe beach and one was martyred from our side," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Masab, described as al-Shabab's spokesman for...

The team of less than two dozen Navy SEALs from Seal Team 6 huddled in one fast boat and headed toward the Somali shoreline under the cover of darkness in the early hours of Saturday morning. Three more small boats with additional SEALs flanked the assault team’s craft, to provide back-up and assist with the planned extraction of an al Shabaab warlord named Ikrima. According to multiple U.S. military sources, the lead boat landed, and the assault team hit the beach near the Southern Somali town of Barawe, headed for the fortified seaside compound of their target. U.S. intelligence had...

A Navy SEAL team targeted a senior leader of the Shabab militant group in a raid on his seaside villa in the Somali town of Baraawe on Saturday, American officials said, in response to a deadly attack on a Nairobi shopping mall for which the group had claimed responsibility. 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. The Shabab leader...

(CNN) -- U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six pulled out during a raid to capture suspected Al-Shabaab leader Ikrima when it became clear that he couldn't be taken alive, a senior U.S. official told CNN. "Their mission was to capture him. Once it became clear we were not going to able to take him, the Navy commander made the decision to withdraw," said the official, who has direct knowledge of the entire Somalia operation but declined to be identified publicly.

Past US strikes on Al Shabab leaders, even successful ones, have not diminished the group.A commando unit from the US Navy’s Seal Team Six launched an amphibious raid on a Somali town, but failed to confirm a capture or kill of their Al Shabab target, suspected to be linked to Nairobi’s Westgate mall terror attack. The operation could have opposite its intended result of discouraging further attacks. Analysts warn that even earlier successful targeted strikes against Al Shabab, a Somalia-based Islamist militant group, failed to curb the group's capacity to carry out international terror attacks, and that failed missions could...