- Nawar al-Awlaki, 8, was among several non-combats killed in Trump’s first raid
- She was the daughter of American al Qaeda leader who was killed in a 2011 raid
- Also killed in the attack was SEAL Team 6 member Officer William Owens
- Officials said that in the President’s first strike ‘almost everything went wrong
An eight-year-old girl and a SEAL Team Six member have been named after they were killed in Trump’s first military raid as President, in which officials have said ‘almost everything went wrong.’
Nawar al-Awlaki, also known as Nora, was among the non-combats killed in the raid, which also resulted in the death of several Yemeni women.
The only other American citizen killed was the SEAL, Chief Petty Officer William ‘Ryan’ Owens, a 36-year-old from Illinois.
SEAL Team 6 is the US Navy’s special forces team that gained worldwide fame for killing Osama bin Laden.
This was the president’s first clandestine strike, and not one that was originally ordered by former President Obama.
It involved ‘boots on the ground’ at an al Qaeda Camp near al Bayda in south central Yemen, officials confirmed in a statement to NBC news.
The eight-year-old, Nora, was the daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American al Qaeda leader, born in New Mexico, who was killed in a US strike ordered by President Obama five years ago.
He was killed by a drone on September 30, 2011, after the Justice Department approved killing him in a memorandum that was disclosed in 2014.
Nora’s grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, is Yemen’s former agriculture minister and told NBC news: ‘My granddaughter was staying for a while with her mother, so when the attack came, they were sitting in the house, and a bullet struck her in the neck at 2:30 past midnight. Other children in the same house were killed.’
He said she died two hours after being shot.
He continued, ‘They (referring to the SEALs) entered another house and killed everybody in it, including all the women. They burned the house. There is an asumption there was a woman from Saudi Arabia who was with al Qaeda. All we know is that she was a children’s teacher.’
The fate of the girl’s mother has not been confirmed. However, al-Awlaki’s brother-in-law was killed in the raid.
An official told NBC that the raid was directed from a US base in Djibouti. Officially, it was to search for ‘information that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terrorist plots’.
Source: DailyMail