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| Africa Horn |
| Yemen: Now it can be told - US officers killed gunmen in Sana confrontation |
| 2014-05-10 |
| WASHINGTON -- A United States Special Operations commando and a Central Intelligence Agency officer in Yemen shot and killed two armed Yemeni civilians who tried to kidnap them while the Americans were in a barbershop in the country's capital two weeks ago, American officials said on Friday. The two Americans, attached to the United States Embassy, were whisked out of the volatile Middle East nation within a few days of the shooting, with the blessing of the Yemeni government, American officials said. Exactly what the two Americans were doing at the time of the shooting on April 24 is unclear. Some American officials said they were merely getting a haircut in a barbershop on Hadda Street in Sana, in an upscale district frequently visited by foreigners, playing down any suggestions that they were engaged in a clandestine operation. Late Friday, both the Pentagon and C.I.A. declined to comment on the shooting, and referred all questions to the State Department. "We can confirm that, last month, two U.S. Embassy officers in Yemen fired their weapons after being confronted by armed individuals in an attempted kidnapping at a small commercial business in Sana," a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said in an email response to questions from The New York Times. "Two of the armed individuals were killed. The Embassy officers are no longer in Yemen." A senior American official said one individual involved in the shooting was a lieutenant colonel with the elite Joint Special Operations Command and the other was a C.I.A. officer. In the Yemeni news media, the involvement of American commandos in the shooting has not been disclosed. The day after the shooting, the Yemeni Defense Ministry's website, 26sep.net, reported that a foreigner living in Yemen had shot dead two gunmen who tried to abduct him. "Two armed men tried to kidnap a foreign citizen as he was leaving a barber in Hadda Street in Sana," the website said. "But he was able to resist and shot them with a revolver he had in his possession," the website said, citing security sources. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #1 Revolver? Purchasing, we're gonna need another 10 million rounds. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2014-05-10 15:38 |