TWO French soldiers and 17 militants have been killed in a failed bid to free a French hostage held by Islamists in southern Somalia since 2009, French's defence minister says.
The overnight operation was launched by France's elite DGSE secret service, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a statement on Saturday.
He added that the raid was sparked by the "intransigence of the terrorists who have refused to negotiate for three and a half years and were holding Denis Allex in inhuman conditions".
But the al-Shabab militants denied Le Drian's assertion that they had killed the hostage, a secret agent whose alias is Denis Allex, adding that they would decide his fate in two days and issuing a stern warning to Paris.
Two French soldiers "lost their lives (and) 17 terrorists were killed" in the battle, Le Drian said, offering the "most sincere condolences" to the dead soldiers' families and praising the men for their "courage and remarkable work".
He said the families of the dead soldiers had been informed.
An al-Shabab statement said "in the end, it will be the French citizens who will inevitably taste the bitter consequences of their government's devil-may-care attitude towards hostages".
Sheikh Mohamed Abdallah, a local al-Shabab military commander, said: "Mujahedeen fighters defeated the so-called commandos of the French government who tried to rescue a hostage, and they (the commandos) left the bodies of several of their own at the site of the attack."
Abdallah is the commander of Bulomarer, where the raid allegedly took place.
The al-Shabab statement said the French carried away "several" of their dead.
"The helicopters attacked a house ... upon the assumption that Denis Allex was being held at that location, but owing to a fatal intelligence blunder, the rescue mission turned disastrously wrong.
"Several French soldiers were killed in the battle and many more were injured before they fled from the scene of battle, leaving behind some military paraphernalia and even one of their comrades on the ground.
"The injured French soldier is now in the custody of the mujahedeen and Allex still remains safe and far from the location of the battle."
A Bulomarer resident, Idris Youssouf, said: "We don't know exactly what happened because the attack took place at night, but this morning we saw several corpses including that of a white man.
"Three civilians were also killed in the gunfight," he said.
The French secret agent was kidnapped in Somalia in July 2009 along with a colleague who was freed the following month.
Four military helicopters were used in the raid on al-Shabab-controlled Bulomarer, some 110 kilometres south of the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses said.
Al-Shabab has lost its main strongholds in the south and centre of the country following an offensive launched in mid-2011 by an African Union force, but they still control some rural areas.
Allex appeared in a video in June 2010 appealing to Paris to drop its support for the Somali government.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
French army raid in Somalia leaves 19 dead
Dengan url
http://jemuranduit.blogspot.com/2013/01/french-army-raid-in-somalia-leaves-19.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
French army raid in Somalia leaves 19 dead
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
French army raid in Somalia leaves 19 dead
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar