A Twitter account that claims familiarity with the Al Shabab terrorist organization posted photos of two white males on October 6 that it claims are the remains of Navy SEALs left behind after a failed Oct. 5 raid on its compound at Baraawa, Somalia.
The photos show both men suffered extensive damage to their heads, but there are also bandages that suggest they received medical attention.
Update: A retired Navy SEAL officer, who served with SEAL Team Six, said he suspected the photos were taken from a gore fetish website.
"No one was left behind," he said.
The unspent rounds of ammunition were probably ejects and the GPS was not the latest model used by the Navy's special warfare teams, he said. "I think we are looking at a hoax."
In addition to the photos of the two men, the Twitter account, High Spirit Mission Press Office @hsmpress_, posted photos of what it described as a duty belt and other gear that would be carried by American military personnel, including an American smoke grenade canister, a package of wipes for eye protection googles, bullets and a Garmin-brand GPS device.
@hsmpress_ also posted that the target of the raid Ahmed Abdi Godane was alive and well.
An email to the contact address was bounced back as undeliverable.
High Spirit Mission describes itself: “High Spirit Mission. Not affiliated with Alshabab. Anti-Violence. Devil's Advocate! Tweets are just opinions based on inductive reasoning & intuition.”
There has been no official statement from US military public affairs, but unnamed officials have told various media outlets that the Saturday raid was executed by SEAL Team Six, the elite unit within the Navy’s Special Warfare community.
It is the same team that July 8, 2011 raided Osama bin Laden’s compound and later lost 22 members in a Aug. 6, 2011 crash of the “Extortion 17” Chinook crash in Afghanistan.
There are reports that Army Rangers were part of the raid, and given the short hair of the men depicted, they could be Rangers, also.
Military protocol for casualties is to release basic information about them, without personal specifics until the next-of-kin have been notified or until an action has been completed, so as not to compromise an ongoing operation.
The raid on Baraawa comes 20 years after the star-crossed Operation Gothic Serpent in the Battle of Mogadishu, immortalized in the book and film “Black Hawk Down.” That raid, where 18 US personnel were killed, is etched in the annals of American military lore because Rangers, and other special operations troops, were ordered to withdraw, but refused to leave behind the remains of their fallen brothers.
Developing…
Neil W. McCabe is the editor of Human Event’s “Guns & Patriots” e-letter and was a senior reporter at the Human Events newspaper. McCabe deployed with the Army Reserve to Iraq for 15 months as a combat historian. For many years, he was a reporter and photographer for “The Pilot,” Boston’s Catholic paper. He was also the editor of two free community papers, “The Somerville (Mass.) News and “The Alewife (North Cambridge, Mass.).”
