Three US soldiers, all identified as Army Green Berets, were killed and two others wounded in an ambush Wednesday in the African country of Niger, near its border with Mali. The troops were part of a joint patrol with Nigeriens when they were ambushed by as-yet-unknown attackers.
The speculation is that the attackers were from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a regional al-Qaeda affiliate that operates along the Niger-Mali border regularly. There has been no claim of responsibility yet.
The confirmation of the incident also marks the first confirmation that US special forces are engaged in patrols inside Niger. In 2015, US African Command announced a “training” operation in Niger, but presented it as purely training, and not a deployment where US troops would be sent on combat patrols.
Niger is on the periphery of both AQIM’s operations and Boko Haram’s attacks, and while neither is based in the country as such, it’s been a long-standing concern that US troops in the country, even for training, would find themselves a target. This is doubly so since the US troops appear to be conducting patrols.
Niger and Nigeria are different countries. If the Green Berets were training troops from Niger, they were not “Nigerian” troops. Or is Nigeria intervening in its neighbor with our help?
Note: it was spelled NigeriEn not NigeriAn, not sure if that makes much difference though…dead is dead….and American troops are still engaging in an undeclared war against people that haven’t attack the U.S.
Well, if they’re fighting an Al-Qaeda franchise, that kind of is an organisation that’s attacked the US.
someone should tell antiwar.com while their website is secure their news.antiwar.com link is unsecured.
Will do
Eric Garris informs me that indeed there was some kind of screw-up with https for that subdomain and asks me to pass on his thanks to you for letting us know. They’re working on it.
Not buying it. Sounds like blue on green to me, how did they get 3 out of 5?
If it was an ambush, dozens of Niger soldiers could also have died. It’s possible.
Once upon a time, a representative body declared our wars before the body bags started coming back from them. How quaint. Somehow we now have a whole spectrum of executive actions, where the enemy being targeted is the American people. Instead of civilian oversight, we have public relations lies to justify the secret wars everywhere. Thus Al Qaeda better understands what US troops are up to than we do. And if no one has to explain why we are there, corrupt reasons like backing dictators or oil interests can dominate.
once you put any troops or ‘advisors’ into a country, especially in an unstable part of the world (thanks to the destruction of Libya by the US and nato) they are some day going to be shot at or ‘challenged’
the US is at war in Niger and nobody in the US public knows anything about it. way to go pentagon!
from the WA Post
“….On Thursday, the Pentagon’s chief spokeswoman, Dana White, said the
soldiers died, along with a “partner nation member,” from enemy contact,
although she was careful to avoid the word “combat.”…..
they’re not in combat, they’re just sightseeing!!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/deaths-of-3-elite-us-troops-in-niger-highlight-quietly-expanding-mission/2017/10/05/3377b6ae-aa20-11e7-b3aa-c0e2e1d41e38_story.html