Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula women engaged U.S. Navy Seals during a Saturday raid in Yemen, a first for the terrorist group.
Women at the site appeared trained for a raid, Pentagon Spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Monday. “The [female fighters] ran to pre-established positions as if they’d trained to be ready and trained to be combatants and engage with us. So, some of the enemy killed in combat are in fact female,” he elaborated.
Davis clarified the use of women in combat by the terrorist group was highly “unusual,” adding that “as far as my data shows, there are no instances of women having an operational role in AQAP.” The use of women in combat by an Islamic extremist group against the all-male Navy SEAL team 6 was particularly ironic.
The 75th Army Ranger Regiment is currently the only special operations unit in the U.S. military with a female member. No special operations units in the Marine Corps, the Navy or Air Force include female personnel. These units also do not have females in their training pipelines. The Pentagon officially lifted the ban on women in combat in 2013. Each military branch reacted differently to the change in terms of its regulations on which combat schools would be open to women.
Beginning the unusual operation, a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey made a “hard landing” near the staging area, injuring three U.S. navy seals in transit to the operation. The downed aircraft was later destroyed by a U.S. airstrike, likely to protect the proprietary technology within it. The Pentagon clarified that the helicopter was not downed by enemy fire, but went down in a “separate but unrelated incident.”
U.S. Navy Seal Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens was killed in a shootout with the militants, which wounded 3 other U.S. Navy Seals. “Almost everything went wrong,” a U.S. defense official told NBCNews after the operation.
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