U.S. Navy SEALs carried out a daring predawn raid Saturday on the Somali seaside home of a leader of the al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab, U.S. officials said, an operation that suggests how worried Washington has become about the threat posed by a group that recently carried out an attack on a shopping mall in neighboring Kenya.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details about a classified operation, said U.S. commandos appear to have killed members of al-Shabab, but did not detain anyone during the early-morning raid.
The operation in the Somali town of Baraawe was launched in response to the Sept. 21 attack on the upscale Westgate mall in Nairobi, which killed 67 people and significantly raised the profile of al-Shabab, which took credit for the raid.
Western officials have grown alarmed that a group that was believed to have had limited ability to operate outside Somalia is now willing to call on supporters, including dual-national Somalis, to carry out attacks abroad.
Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment on the raid, as did a White House spokesperson.
Officials did not say which leader was the target of the raid. Saturday’s operation, which was first reported by the New York Times, appeared to mark the boldest U.S. strike in Somalia since the 2009 operation by Navy SEALs that killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaeda figure who was running the network’s operations in Somalia.
Al-Shabab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, emerged in 2006 after invading Ethiopian troops drove out the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group that once controlled large swaths of Somalia.
Al-Shabab tapped into a widespread hatred of foreigners to build support across much of southern and central Somalia. But its popularity was short-lived because of the militia’s strict implementation of Islamic law, including public amputations, stonings and other harsh measures.
Last month’s attack in Nairobi came as U.S. intelligence had assessed al-Shabab to be weakening in Somalia in the face of an expanded multilateral African military force and a new civilian government.
The administration focused on the group within months of Obama’s 2009 inauguration, when senior Pentagon officials proposed targeting al-Shabab training camps in Somalia. Obama’s national security team rejected the proposal, arguing that the group was focused primarily on domestic attacks. At the same time, administration officials were concerned that a number of young men of Somali origin, who had obtained American or European passports, had returned to Somalia to join al-Shabab.
Although a helicopter-borne U.S joint special operations team fired on and killed Nabham — believed to be a mastermind of the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — in September 2009, there were no direct U.S. attacks against al-Shabab figures until two years later.
In early 2011, after noting what senior officials said were increasing ties between some of the al-Shabab leadership and Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the administration partially changed course. Under a new policy, top al-Shabaab figures with links to the Yemen group were placed on target lists; Obama authorized the first drone strike against two senior al-Shabab figures in Somalia in June 2011.
That remained the policy, and no further attacks have been publicly disclosed. In congressional testimony this year, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said that a weakened al-Shabab “remains focused on local and regional challenges,” but is continuing to focus on “regional adversaries, including targeting U.S. and Western interests in East Africa.”
Scott Wilson in Washington and Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi contributed to this report.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details about a classified operation, said U.S. commandos appear to have killed members of al-Shabab, but did not detain anyone during the early-morning raid.
The operation in the Somali town of Baraawe was launched in response to the Sept. 21 attack on the upscale Westgate mall in Nairobi, which killed 67 people and significantly raised the profile of al-Shabab, which took credit for the raid.
Western officials have grown alarmed that a group that was believed to have had limited ability to operate outside Somalia is now willing to call on supporters, including dual-national Somalis, to carry out attacks abroad.
Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment on the raid, as did a White House spokesperson.
Officials did not say which leader was the target of the raid. Saturday’s operation, which was first reported by the New York Times, appeared to mark the boldest U.S. strike in Somalia since the 2009 operation by Navy SEALs that killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaeda figure who was running the network’s operations in Somalia.
Al-Shabab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, emerged in 2006 after invading Ethiopian troops drove out the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group that once controlled large swaths of Somalia.
Al-Shabab tapped into a widespread hatred of foreigners to build support across much of southern and central Somalia. But its popularity was short-lived because of the militia’s strict implementation of Islamic law, including public amputations, stonings and other harsh measures.
Last month’s attack in Nairobi came as U.S. intelligence had assessed al-Shabab to be weakening in Somalia in the face of an expanded multilateral African military force and a new civilian government.
The administration focused on the group within months of Obama’s 2009 inauguration, when senior Pentagon officials proposed targeting al-Shabab training camps in Somalia. Obama’s national security team rejected the proposal, arguing that the group was focused primarily on domestic attacks. At the same time, administration officials were concerned that a number of young men of Somali origin, who had obtained American or European passports, had returned to Somalia to join al-Shabab.
Although a helicopter-borne U.S joint special operations team fired on and killed Nabham — believed to be a mastermind of the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — in September 2009, there were no direct U.S. attacks against al-Shabab figures until two years later.
In early 2011, after noting what senior officials said were increasing ties between some of the al-Shabab leadership and Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the administration partially changed course. Under a new policy, top al-Shabaab figures with links to the Yemen group were placed on target lists; Obama authorized the first drone strike against two senior al-Shabab figures in Somalia in June 2011.
That remained the policy, and no further attacks have been publicly disclosed. In congressional testimony this year, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said that a weakened al-Shabab “remains focused on local and regional challenges,” but is continuing to focus on “regional adversaries, including targeting U.S. and Western interests in East Africa.”
Scott Wilson in Washington and Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi contributed to this report.