Alice Fordham
Tom Bowman
A squad of U. S. Navy SEALs participate in special operations urban combat training in 2012. The training exercise familiarizes special operators with urban environments and tactical maneuvering during night and day operations.
Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Meranda Keller/U. S. Navy
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A squad of U. S. Navy SEALs participate in special operations urban combat training in 2012. The training exercise familiarizes special operators with urban environments and tactical maneuvering during night and day operations.
The tribal delegation visiting Sheikh Abdelraouf al-Dhahab was still talking in the very early hours of the morning last Sunday when his nephew, Abdullah, noticed strangers approaching on foot across the rocky, inhospitable terrain of central Yemen.
“Who are you? ” Abdullah called out into the night. “Who are you? ”
The men shot him dead.
Startled by the gunfire, the Dhahab family scrambled to take up their own weapons and defend their house.
According to accounts by locals, this was the way the battle began with U. S. special operations forces and some of their allies, which would unfold over several hours on the ground — and end with an aerial bombardment.
By dawn, one American sailor was dead and three other service members were injured. Locals say numerous civilians, including women and nine children, were among the Yemenis killed. The U. S. military has opened an investigation, and U. S. military officials tell NPR that civilians were indeed among the victims.
Taken together, claims and counter-claims from the U. S. military and local residents described a chaotic operation, one that drew sharp criticism from Yemeni officials who usually support the U. S. The aftermath of the raid shows the potential dangers if the U. S. military relaxes its current restrictions about using force and protecting civilians, which President Donald Trump has asked the Pentagon to review.
One local man, Sadeq al-Jawfi, was monitoring the battle from his village about three miles away, in constant telephone contact with men from his tribe who were visiting the Dhahab family.
A Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, destroyed a funeral hall in October.
Hani Mohammed/AP
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American officials described the raid as an attack on a compound. But Jawfi’s description was of a family house in a village with similar houses, albeit one with guard posts, where people were well armed.
The Dhahabs and other families fought against the American raiders, who called in air support. The bombardment struck houses in which families were sheltering.
Navy SEAL, Chief Special Warfare Operator William Owens, of Peoria, Ill., was killed in the Yemen raid on Saturday, the Pentagon said.
U. S. Navy
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Jawfi told NPR that 24 people were killed, and provided a list of names including nine men, six women and nine children. He has served on a body known as a de-escalation committee, which works with the U. S.-recognized Yemeni government in coordination with the United Nations to try to quell violence in the troubled country.
NPR previously reported the death of the 8-year-old daughter of Yemeni-American terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. She lived with her grandfather in the capital, Sanaa, but was visiting her mother, who is Abdelraouf al-Dhahab’s sister.
The fighting also claimed the life of an U. S. Navy SEAL, Chief Special Warfare Operator William Owens. Other U. S. troops were injured when their aircraft crash-landed as part of the operation. On Wednesday, President Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base to take part in the transfer of Owens’ body from the military to his family.
The casualties were the military’s first under Trump, who approved the special operations raid after planning began in November under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
The battle and its aftermath, described to NPR by U. S. national security officials as well as the local witnesses, are the subject of a new investigation by the U. S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.
Although the Americans are continuing to look into what happened, CENTCOM Wednesday acknowledged “regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed. ”
By around 5 a.m. Sunday, the raiders were gone and the skies were clear, locals said. Abdullah al-Taissi, a tribal sheikh who lives in the village and confirmed much of Jawfi’s account, watched the attack from his house.
“I walked out of my house when it was over and began burying the dead,” he said. “By noon, we were done. ”
Taissi said he counted about 28 bodies. Abdelraouf was among the dead, as was his brother, Sultan, and a tribal sheikh named Saif al-Jawfi.
In Washington, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the raid — which he called “very, very well thought out and executed” — had yielded valuable intelligence about al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
The local witnesses disputed that, saying the special operations troops never entered any buildings to take any computers or documents.
Spicer said 14 of those killed were AQAP terrorists. Sadeq al-Jawfi also disputed that Abdelraouf al-Dhahab was a member of AQAP – though he did not deny family connections with the group.
“Look,” Jawfi said, “there were brothers who had connections to al-Qaida, this is true. ” But the three Dhahab brothers he named were already dead before Sunday’s raid — two killed by drone strikes and one by a fourth brother.
Jawfi said Dhahab was working with the displaced Yemeni government that the U. S. and its allies have been supporting against Houthi rebels, who are armed and supported by Iran.
In fact, Jawfi said, Dhahab had just returned from a trip to Maarib Province to collect money to pay the salaries of pro-government fighters.
The Yemeni government’s foreign minister condemned the attack. A spokesman for the armed forces confirmed to local news media that Dhahab had been working for them.
“Abdelraouf al-Dhahab was not a terrorist or connected to any radical group,” said Mohsen Khasrouf, the spokesman. “We are surprised this has happened. ”
Reuters, on the other hand, reports that AQAP called Abdelraouf a “holy warrior. ”
Also conflicted: Women in the compound may have started out as bystanders but became combatants when they took up weapons from the dead men, said one senior U. S. military official. Thus they would have posed a threat to the special operations raiders, complicating the issue of which casualties were civilian.
Central Command may answer some of these questions in its investigation, but given the highly sensitive nature of U. S. special operations, the information might not become public.
