The Kenyan government response to Al-Shabaab's deadly siege of a Nairobi mall last month has long promised to be swift and deadly, according to President Uhuru Kenyatta. Now we know why: he brought his allies in from the United States in a daring double anti-terror operation this weekend, with a raid against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the capture of a terrorist suspected in the African US Embassy bombings in 1998 in Libya.
U.S. military forces were involved in two separate operations in Africa -- one of them targeting a member of the group Al-Shabaab, which was behind last month's Kenya mall attack, and the other going after an al Qaeda leader tied to the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies.
The Al-Shabaab raid took place in Somalia, where that terrorist group is based, sometime in the past 24 hours, a senior U.S. official said Saturday evening.
The team of U.S. Navy SEALs had to withdraw before it could confirm whether it killed the target because they came under fire, the official said. The SEALs made the "prudent decision" to withdraw rather than engage in further combat, according to the official.
The other mission ended in the capture of Abu Anas al Libi, who is suspected to have played a significant role in the August 7, 1998, bombings of American embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Nairobi, Kenya, U.S. officials said.
The key al Qaeda operative was captured by U.S. special operations forces in Tripoli, Libya, according to the officials.
This U.S. operation was conducted with the knowledge of the Libyan government, said one U.S. official.
So one operation confirmed successful, the other may have been, but Navy SEALs pulled out of the other one before it could be confirmed. We'll see what happens next as Africa remains a prime target for terrorists like this.
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