| Operation Octave Fusion | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 United States | Somali pirates | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 24 DEVGRU operators C-130 Hercules | 9 pirates | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| None | 9 killed [1] | ||||||
On January 25, 2012, a team of United States Navy SEALs raided a compound 12 miles north of the Somali city of Adado, killing nine Somali pirates and freeing their hostages, American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted.
In October 2011, Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted, who had been working on a demining project with the Danish Refugee Council, were kidnapped by Somali pirates in Galkayo. [1] Attempts by the Council to enlist local Somali elders and traditional leaders to assist in freeing the hostages were unsuccessful, and the pirates refused an offer of US$1.5 million ransom. [2] [3] With Buchanan's health declining, U.S. officials decided to launch a raid against the pirates using several different United States special operations forces, including elements of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group. [4]
Early on January 25, 2012, two dozen Navy SEALs parachuted from a C-130 Hercules twelve miles north of the Somali town of Adado, Galguduud, where pirates were holding the hostages with the intention of ransoming them. [3] The SEALs then traveled by foot from their drop zone, attacked the compound, and engaged the pirates, killing all nine of them. [4] A first-hand account of the raid appears in former DEVGRU operator Justin K. Sheffield's 2020 book MOB VI: A Seal Team Six Operator's Battles in the Fight for Good Over Evil.
After raiding the pirates' compound and freeing the hostages, the U.S. forces returned to their base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. U.S. President Barack Obama congratulated Defense Secretary Leon Panetta before his 2012 State of the Union address, without publicly revealing any details at that time. [1]
Buchanan gave her first interview about being kidnapped with 60 Minutes in May 2013; amongst her first thoughts when kidnapped were that it was too soon to die without having children and saying goodbye to her loved ones. Buchanan and her husband returned to the United States and now have a son and daughter. [5]
Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA) is a component of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). The Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) is the primary military component assigned to accomplish the objectives of the mission. The naval components are the multinational Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) and Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) which operates under the direction of the United States Fifth Fleet. Both of these organizations have been historically part of United States Central Command. In February 2007, United States President George W. Bush announced the establishment of the United States Africa Command which took over all of the area of operations of CJTF-HOA in October 2008.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia occurs in the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel, and Somali Sea, in Somali territorial waters and other surrounding places and has a long and troubled history with different perspectives from different communities. It was initially a threat to international fishing vessels during the early 2000s, only to rapidly escalate and expand to international shipping during the War in Somalia (2006–2009).
On September 2, 2008, the French yacht Carré d'As IV and its two crew were captured in the Gulf of Aden by seven armed Somali pirates, who demanded the release of six pirates captured in the April MY Le Ponant raid and over one million dollars in ransom. On September 16, 2008, on the orders of President Nicolas Sarkozy, French special forces raided and recovered the yacht, rescued the two hostages, killed one pirate, and captured the other six. The pirates were flown to France to stand trial for piracy and related offenses; ultimately, five of them were convicted and sentenced to four to eight years in prison, while a sixth was acquitted. The incident marked the second French counter-piracy commando operation of 2008, as well as the first French trial of Somali pirates.
The following is a list of known foreign hostages captured in Somalia, particularly since the start of the Ethiopian intervention and the 2009–present phase of the civil war.
The Maersk Alabamahijacking began on 8 April 2009, when four pirates in the Somali Basin seized the Danish/U.S. cargo ship Maersk Alabama at a distance of 240 nautical miles southeast of Eyl, Somalia. The siege ended after a rescue effort by the United States Navy on 12 April.
The April 2009 raid off Somalia was a military operation conducted by France and Germany to retake the French yacht Tanit on 9 April 2009, a yacht which had been captured by Somali pirates on 4 April 2009. It occurred during Operation Atalanta, a European Union mission in Somali waters. The pirates had attempted to extract a ransom by holding the yacht's occupants hostage, but were ultimately defeated when the French Navy assaulted them.
The Republic of Korea Navy Somali Sea Escort Task Group, also known as Cheonghae Unit was established by the Republic of Korea Navy to protect civilian ships near the coast of Somalia under Combined Task Force 151. The naval task force is named after the historical 9th-century Korean military base Cheonghaejin.
MV Samho Jewelry is a Norwegian-owned and South Korean-operated chemical tanker. She was hijacked by Somali pirates on January 15, 2011 and rescued six days later by South Korean Navy commandos.
Operation Dawn of Gulf of Aden was a naval operation by the Republic of Korea Navy against Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea. The operation was spurred by the pirates' seizure of the South Korean chemical tanker Samho Jewelry. In response, the South Korean government sent a destroyer and 30 naval commandos to retake the ship and rescue its crew. After trailing the tanker for several days and fighting a preliminary engagement that neutralized four of the pirates, the South Korean forces retook the ship by force on January 21, 2011, in a successful boarding action that resulted in the deaths of eight and the capture of five out of thirteen pirates.
The Battle of Minicoy Island was a single ship action in January 2011 between Indian naval forces and Somali pirates, during Operation Island Watch. Pirates in the former Thai fishing trawler Prantalay 14 resisted and attacked the Indian Navy patrol vessel INS Cankarso and, in a long surface action off Minicoy Island, the Indians sank the hostile ship and rescued twenty captives.
On 11 January 2013, the French military launched an unsuccessful operation in Bulo Marer, Lower Shabelle, Somalia to rescue French hostage Denis Allex from the militant Islamist organization al-Shabaab. Allex was executed in response, and two French commandos, at least 17 Islamist militants and at least eight civilians were killed in the firefight.
The following lists events that happened in 2009 in Somalia.
The 2014 hostage rescue operations in Yemen were missions to rescue hostages held by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen. The first attempt on 26 November 2014 rescued 8 hostages, but five hostages, including the American journalist Luke Somers, were moved by AQAP to another location prior to the raid. The second attempt by U.S. Navy SEALs once again attempted to rescue the hostages, but Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie were killed by AQAP during the raid in Shabwah Governorate of Yemen. Although the majority of hostages had been rescued, the operation was still seen as a failure in the West. The media particularly criticised the inability of American forces to rescue Somers.
Michael Scott Moore is an American journalist and novelist. He is the author of Sweetness and Blood (2010), about the history of surfing, and The Desert and the Sea (2018), a memoir about his captivity in Somalia.
This is a 2017 timeline of events in the Somali Civil War (2009–present).
During the early hours of October 31, 2020, United States Navy SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) conducted an operation in Northern Nigeria, resulting in the rescue of an American hostage and the killing of six of the seven captors. The hostage, 27-year-old Philip Walton, had been kidnapped in front of his family at his home in the village of Massalata in neighboring Niger on 26 October by armed gunmen, who intended to sell him to armed terrorist groups in the area.
