The rural home of a tribal leader's family, friendly with some Yemeni al-Qaeda members, was raided by a special operations commando. A U.S. tiltrotor military aircraft was shot down during the raid. One soldier was killed and several were wounded. The U.S. commandos responded with their usual panic. They killed anyone in sight and bombed the shit out of any nearby structure. According to Yemeni sources between 30 and 57 Yemenis were killed including eight women and eight children (graphic pics). The U.S. military claimed, as it always does, that no civilians were hurt in the raid.That early description holds up well against recent reporting by NBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times. The incident happened as described.
One of the killed kids was the 8 year old daughter of al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki.
But an open question is still why the raid happened. The military and the administration claim it was to get intelligence, laptops, hard-drives and the like. But that is not a good explanation for an elaborate raid that needed lots of resources and backup. We had noted that "Yemeni sources say that at least two men were abducted by the U.S. military." The U.S. Central Command claims that no prisoners were taken, only intelligence material. But a few days ago it also claimed that no civilians were hurt which it now admits indeed happened. My gut tells me that we will hear more on this issue.
Comment: Seems like Trump is testing the waters to see how the Establishment is going to respond through a very slight easing of Russian sanctions. Clearly the media is waiting to pounce on his Administration if they perceive anything less than continued demonization of Russia from Trump. Trump is going to have to be very strategic going forward if there is to be rapprochement with Russia.