US Seals free hostages in night raid on Somali pirates

AMERICAN special forces from the unit that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden have freed a US aid worker and her Danish colleague in a daring night-time helicopter raid on a Somali pirate base.

At least six helicopters ferried members of US Navy Seal Team 6 into Somali before two peeled off to swoop on the pirate stronghold.

Using night-vision headsets undercover of darkness, the pilots zeroed in on a hamlet pinpointed by intelligence agents as where Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted were being held after their kidnap in October.

The landmine clearance experts were seized while working for the Danish Demining Group in central Somalia.

Dropping some men by parachute, the helicopters landed and the Navy Seals fanned out, catching the pirates – many of whom were sleeping or under the influence of the narcotic leaf, qat – off guard.

Some, however, opened fire, sparking a 30-minute gunfight. All nine pirates were killed and the hostages being held in a compound of makeshift shelters in Harardheere, were freed.

No US troops were injured in the mission, which began at 2am local time yesterday. US officials confirmed the soldiers were drawn from the same unit that carried out the kill mission on bin Laden in Abottabad, Pakistan, last year.

US president Barack Obama personally ordered the operation, American troops first action on Somali soil since the infamous Black Hawk Down debacle in Mogadishu in 1993 at the height of a civil war.

He was told of the mission’s progress before his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night. Before his speech he singled out defence secretary Leon Panetta in the crowd and said, “Good job tonight”.

The American mission is likely to increase pressure on Britain to consider its own operation to free Judith Tebbutt, a holidaymaker taken hostage by Somali pirates in neighbouring Kenya last year.

Hostages Miss Buchanan, 32, and Mr Thisted, 60, were flown directly from Somalia to Djibouti, on Africa’s Red Sea coast which hosts the largest US military base in Africa.

There were reports Miss Buchanan had recently contracted a serious illness – possibly a kidney infection – that might have proven fatal if she had not been freed.

Their employer, the Danish Refugee Council, had been trying without success to win the hostages’ release through talks with Somali elders.

“One of the hostages has a disease that was very serious and that had to be solved,” Villy Soevndal, Denmark’s foreign minister said yesterday.

Doctors at the US military base in Djibouti, from where the operation is understood to have been launched, were carrying out medical checks on the aid workers yesterday. They will be flown home soon, their employers said.

Security teams hired to protect them were behind their kidnap, local officials said at the time they were seized. As large ships at sea have increased their defences against pirate attacks, gangs have looked for other money-making opportunities such as land-based kidnappings.

Mr Obama’s warning that kidnapping Americans abroad “would not be tolerated” suggests Somali pirates who seize US citizens should expect similar armed raids in future.