President Trump directed a military attack Saturday on a high-ranking ISIS leader and his cohorts in Somalia — sending a resounding message to terrorists the world over in just his second week in office.
Trump announced the bold airstrikes on his Truth Social network: “These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies. The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.
“The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!,'” Trump warned.
The target was a senior ISIS attack planner, Trump said. The name and fate of the Islamic terror mastermind was not shared.
The strike took out the ISIS operatives in the Cal-Miskaad mountains in the Bahaya region in the war-torn Eastern African nation.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said “multiple operatives were killed” in the airstrikes, further degrading “ISIS’s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening US citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians.” He added that the US forces worked with Somali authorities to carry out the offensive.
Hegseth said the strikes send “a clear signal that the United States always stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the United States and our allies, even as we conduct robust border protection and many other operations under President Trump’s leadership.” --->READ MORE HERE
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AP Photo/Evan Vucci |
Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council in the White House, told Breitbart News exclusively that the White House intends to release the video of the successful operation conducted on Saturday morning to eliminate a top Islamic State terrorist in northern Somalia.
“We are working diligently right now—the White House Situation Room, so WHSR, the Counterterrorism Directorate of the National Security Council, and the Defense Department—are working right now as we speak to scrub the actual footage of the munitions detonating and destroying the cave complex,” Gorka told Breitbart News in a phone interview on Saturday after the operation. “We’re working right now to scrub that and make it available in an unclassified form so it can be briefed from the press briefing room so National Security Adviser Waltz and the president can share that.”
“To see it in real time, look, let me say this—it’s as if you’re in a movie but it’s so much more important because it isn’t a movie. It’s not special effects,” he explained. “It’s real, and American lives are being saved 11 days into the Trump administration.”
There are multiple reasons why the White House intends to release the footage publicly at a press briefing next week, Gorka said, including showing those who voted for Trump in November that their president and his administration are committed to acting quickly to keep them safe.
“We are working right now on converting the footage of the operation, of the neutralization, into a format that allows us to share it with America and the world,” Gorka said. “I will leave that to DOD and the White House Situation Room and the whole team responsible for that. We want the 77 million Americans [who voted for Trump] and everyone else who cares about defeating global jihadism to see what is possible in less than two weeks of a new Trump administration.”
But perhaps more importantly than that, Gorka said, the White House hopes releasing the footage will act as a deterrence to potential future terrorists and discourage possible recruits from joining ISIS down the road.
“You can think you’re safe and you can try and build a safe haven in an ungoverned part of the world like northern Somalia, but our capabilities—it’s like the president said,” Gorka said. “You can run but you’ll only die tired. We will find you, but unlike the Biden administration, we’re not going to watch you around the clock for four years. We are going to kill you if you threaten American lives and that is what the president just proved this morning at 9:50 with his incredible leadership.”
Early Saturday afternoon, the president announced on social media that he had ordered a successful strike on the “Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia.”
U.S. Africa Command in a statement announced that the operation, conducted in coordination with the Somali government, was a success. “The command’s initial assessment is that multiple ISIS-Somalia operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed. U.S. Africa Command takes great measures to prevent civilian harm,” U.S.-Africa Command public affairs said in a statement.
While the name of this ISIS leader who was killed still is not publicly available, Gorka told Breitbart News this terrorist was a “HVT” or “High-Value Target.”
“ISIS has really eclipsed Al Qaeda in recent years and with the lack of leadership from the last administration—the Biden administration—including the surrender of Afghanistan and the collapse of Syria, we’ve seen in the last four years an increase in the global Jihadi threat with ISIS in the pole position right now,” Gorka said. “They developed in northern Somalia a refuge and that is the location that was attacked today in a surgical strike by U.S. forces. This is a cave system in northern Somalia. There were multiple ISIS terrorists who thought they were safe in this cave complex, but the main justification was an ISIS leader who was responsible for external operations which means recruiting, training, and then sending Jihadists out to attack western citizens including in the United States.” --->READ MORE HERE
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