5/8/2023 0 Comments Leaked video ambush niger![]() The winding tale of how the lightly armed team ended up in the melee, and why the military’s investigation placed primary blame on the ground force rather than senior leaders, is the subject of a new ABC documentary, 3212 UN-REDACTED, by investigative journalist James Gordon Meek, which premiers Thursday on Hulu.īook excerpt: ‘Sacrifice: A Gold Star Widow’s Fight for the Truth’ But the entire video may bolster the case for award upgrades, as well as renew focus on the botched mission that led the 3rd Group team into an ambush. “It would be inappropriate to speculate about or presuppose any decision related to the awards process.”Ī much shorter, edited version of the video was disseminated by ISIS propagandists a year after the fatal ambush near the village of Tongo Tongo. “Based on the new video, soldiers’ awards could be reevaluated,” said SOCOM spokesman Col. Special Operations Command left the possibility open for award upgrades when reached for comment. ![]() “You see them holding their ground until they cannot hold it any longer.” “You don’t see them running away from the battle,” Terri Criscio, the mother of Wright, agreed. “Fortunately, no one was injured further,” the video’s narrator said.“Jeremiah composed himself after being shot three times and he was still helping Dustin, telling him where the shots were coming from, and he was still shooting,” Gannon said. The video shows a Nigerien force tasked with rescuing the survivors some five hours after the beginning of the ambush had opened fire for 48 seconds on the American-Nigerien unit with automatic weapons after “mistaking the team for enemy forces.” soldiers who were killed, including La David Johnson, whose body was not found for another two days after the attack. The new video also revealed other details about the efforts to rescue the American survivors and the four U.S. The American-Nigerien unit did not anticipate encountering such a large force of militants, which Cloutier said had never been observed operating in the area previously. The troops initially set out on a mission to capture or kill a leader of ISIS in the Greater Sahara without properly informing their chain of command, which thought the eight-vehicle convoy was on a mission to meet with village leaders. The soldiers did not spend enough time training together before deploying, did not properly prepared for their mission with Nigerien troops and were not properly equipped to fight a well-trained enemy, Cloutier determined in his investigation. Roger Cloutier, the AFRICOM chief of staff who led the probe into the incident, blamed systemic problems for the soldiers ending up in a fight where they were outmanned three-to-one and outgunned. Top AFRICOM officials, including Army Maj. La David Johnson, made the fight the deadliest on the African continent for American troops since the infamous Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia in 1993.īlack and Wright were Green Berets and Jeremiah Johnson and La David Johnson – who were not related – were support troops attached to 3rd Special Forces Group, which had deployed from Fort Bragg in North Carolina about a month before the attack. After four shows of force by the French warplanes, the enemy forces eventually fled the area, though no bombs were dropped. Africa Command, told reporters that they were not initially shown the video because of its length.Īccording to the newly released video, the ISIS fighters stopped pursuing the Americans and Nigeriens shortly after they drafted their messages when American drones and two French fighter jets arrived at the scene. ![]() An abbreviated 11-minute version of the video was shown to reporters on May 10, but it was cut off just before the narrator mentioned the messages soldiers sent home. 4 incident that led to widespread scrutiny of the U.S. The Pentagon on Thursday released the 23-minute video that it prepared for Congress, one week after Defense Department officials released an eight-page summary of a roughly 6,300-page investigation into the Oct.
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