French Special Forces failed raid in Somalia kills Intelligence operative.

Hi, here are few details to add on the raid in Somalia, and the war in Mali.
The terrorist group posted pictures of the dead french soldier on their twitter account (HSM Press group), adding some comments on it. Kind of gruesome...
I wonder if France will send some troops to bring back the bodies, what do you think? I always thought that you never leave one of your boy,dead or alive.

About the raids on Mali, just to add from a friend of mine who works as a mechanic on Rafale jets in the french base BA 104 at Abu Dhabi, they send some Rafale to Tchad in addition to the Mirage 2000.

Take care

reply to post by kanbanozaurus


Thank you for the update dude, do you have any links?

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin



here's a link to the pic of the dead soldier on Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen's twitter account:

twitter.com...
twitter.com...

here's an article about the raid in english:
www.france24.com...

So far, there's no more informations about it in the french media, they are focusing on the war in Mali.
No latest update about the dead(?) hostage or the two dead soldiers, kind of strange.
French defense minister and French president confirmed the failed raid, but did not really confirmed the dead of Denis Allex. Same stuff for the terrorist group that only mentions the captured dead soldier, but no word on the DGSE hostage.

If you want to know how the raid was done, I collected a few informations.
Apparently, the decision to intervene was taken one month ago when they localised where was Denis Allex detained. A French Navy ship was deployed off the coast of Somalia (surely a Classe Mistral Helicopter Deck).
Five Cougar helicopters (maybe fom the GAM 56 Air Unit) with 50 commandos from the Service Action (SA) from the DGSE were sent to Bulo Marer, Somalia. They faced about a hundred of Al shebbab militants.
What I heard, is that the french commandos landed about 3 kilometers away from their target in the middle of fields. But they were quickly spotted by locals who told the Al shebbab, so they managed to be ready when the French commandos arrived.
The fight lasted about 45 minutes before the French commandos were forced to retreat.

As I said before, no new imformations about this failed raid in the french medias. Looks like they're debriefing it to draw conclusions...

New informations just appeared this morning in the french media.

Somali militants just released a official statement that they will execute the french hostage Denis Allex as a result of the failed attempt to free him.
French official Chief of Staff responded that they think Denis Allex was already killed during the assault, and that the Al Shabaab are lying. It's just a media manipulation that they already employed in the past.

Link to the Al Shabaab statement:
www.twitlonger.com...

Link in english to an article about the statement and the response by Chief of Staff:
www.france24.com...

Link in french:
www.bfmtv.com...

Take care

An update,

It was confirmed that a ceremony has been held at the DGSE headquarter (Caserne Mortier in Paris) for the three lost agents (two from the commandos, and the former hostage) on february 14.
Due to the secret policy of the DGSE, there no a lot of informations about it, and they won't publish any about the dead agents.
We learn that two commandos were killed. One of them died of his injury on board Le Mistral (french Navy helicopter deck), and the other was reported missing in action, but confirmed dead after the pictures from Al shabaab group.The hostage, Denis Allex is considered as dead.

Two links about the ceremony (sorry there are only in french) :
www.frederichelbert.com...
www.lepoint.fr...

Take care

To add to this thread, it is not the first time recently that french forces failed to rescue some hostages in Africa.
In january 2011, they weren't able to rescue two french hostages in Niger who unfortunately died during the assault.

m.guardian.co.uk...

Take care

OP , iirc the french commando came from DGSE's Direct Action team and not GIGN

milomilo
OP , iirc the french commando came from DGSE's Direct Action team and not GIGN

Do you have any links about this?

reply to post by milomilo


DSGE is the French secret services

GIGN - is the hostage rescue/SWAT team of the National Police (Gendarme National)

Makes sense Somalia operation carried out by DSGE

GIGN was responsible for the takedown of hijacked Algerian airliner at Marsailles

I think someone should recruit the somalians into some kind of mercenary group like the Ghurkas.. they seem very capable in fighting.. let see their score against the rest of the world :

- shot down the dreaded Night Stalkers and captured it's pilot
- Slaughter US Rangers
- Killed Delta Force super soldiers
- Killed Navy Seals super soldiers
- Hijack many ships
- play soccer with the head of US helicopter pilot

They practically better than all spec ops in the world..

a reply to: milomilo
Its not because they were any more sophisticated or clever. They simply had the numbers to throw at it. Reckless fools just keep pouring in meat to the grinder. This kind of irrational fearlessness has its own precedent in the early 20th or late 19th century against the British in a nearby country. Thousands of warriors armed with simple weapons not utilizing gun powder charged on British positions, resulting in quite a horrific initial casualty. But the crazed maniacs just kept charging and eventually came upon them. It ended in all bloody hell, of course gunpowder was still victorious.