Military Cites Broad Failures, but Assigns No Direct Blame in Deadly Niger Ambush
Source: The New York Times
By Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmitt
May 10, 2018
WASHINGTON — A long-awaited Defense Department investigation of a Special Forces mission in Niger last fall found widespread problems across all levels of the military operation, but concludes that “no single failure or deficiency” led to the deaths of four American soldiers who were among a team of Green Berets ambushed by fighters aligned with the Islamic State.
Even as it found “individual, organizational and institutional” mistakes, the investigation also revealed heroic efforts by a small team that was battered and outnumbered as it braced to take a last stand against a barrage of heavy machine gunfire and mortar rounds.
Were it not for the arrival of French Mirage aircraft that made low, roaring passes in a show of force that scattered the extremists, far more Americans and their Nigerien partners likely would have been killed in what, ultimately, was the largest loss of United States troops during combat in Africa since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia.
“Nigerien and French units assisted without hesitation,” according to the investigation’s eight-page executive summary that the Pentagon released on Thursday. It said the allied forces “very likely saved the lives of U.S. and Nigerien soldiers, several of whom were wounded in the attack.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/world/africa/military-niger-ambush-investigation.html
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