
© Joe Penney / ReutersUS Special Forces train Nigerien troops, March 2014
The US military mission in Niger is under renewed scrutiny after ISIS released a video of the October 2017 ambush that killed four US soldiers.
Their unit was reportedly hunting a senior IS member without proper orders.Four members of the US military were killed and another four injured in October 2017, after their patrol was ambushed by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) militants outside of Tongo Tongo, near the border with Mali. Contrary to initial claims that the ambushed unit was on a routine patrol, the report indicates that they went hunting for a high-level IS commander, Doundou Chefou, AP reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the report's contents.
The incident
revealed a major US troop presence in the West African country, which was quickly eclipsed by a
media spat between a Florida Congresswoman and President Donald Trump over his condolence call to the widow of one of the men.
On Sunday, IS posted a video from the ambush, taken from the helmet camera of one of the slain soldiers. The video shows the attack and the deaths of two soldiers, ending with one of them being shot repeatedly at close range.
SOFREP, which says it posts "trusted news and intelligence from Spec Ops veterans,"
also published the video, editing out IS propaganda. Many veterans condemned the site's decision to publish the video. Others, however, defended the publication as a way to get to the truth about the ambush.
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