President Barack Obama personally apologized for the incident. An official statement said there was "tremendous sorrow" over the death of the two innocent hostages: American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto. Both had been working on aid projects in Pakistan.
"As president and commander-in-chief I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations, including the ones that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni," Obama said at the White House. "I profoundly regret what happened."
The president told reporters, "Based on the intelligence that we obtained at the time, including hundreds of hours of surveillance, we believed this was an al-Qaida compound, that no civilians were present and that capturing these terrorists was not possible."
voanews.com
23/4/15
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Obama takes blame for operation that killed two hostages...
ReplyDeletePresident Barack Obama on Thursday (Apr 23) revealed that an American and an Italian hostage were killed in a covert US counter-terrorism operation on the Afghan-Pakistan border in January, saying he took "full responsibility" for the tragedy.
Making public the previously classified finding, Obama expressed his "deepest apologies" to the families of the two hostages, Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto.
Two other Americans linked to Al-Qaeda, including spokesman Adam Gadahn, were killed in operations at around the same time, the White House said.
"Based on information and intelligence we have obtained, we believe that a US counter-terrorism operation targeting an Al-Qaeda compound in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region accidentally killed Warren and Giovanni this past January," Obama said in an unscheduled statement.
"As president and as commander-in-chief, I take full responsibility for all our counter-terrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni, he said.
"I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government, I offer our deepest apologies to the families."......AFP........channelnewsasia.com
23/4/15
Obama: We All Bleed When an American Dies ...
ReplyDeleteU.S. President Barack Obama told members of the U.S. intelligence community Friday "we all bleed when we lose an American life."
President Obama's comments come just one day after the White House announced the deaths of two hostages -- American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto -- in a U.S. counterterrorism operation.
The U.S. leader said that when asked how he absorbs news like that, he told the truth -- "it was hard."
Earlier Friday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration would not call the operation that killed two hostages an "accident," since it fulfilled its mission of taking al-Qaida leaders off the battlefield. Earnest said Weinstein's death was a "tragic, unintended consequence."
U.S. officials say Ahmed Farouq, an American who the White House says was an al-Qaida leader, was killed in the same operation.
U.S. officials have also concluded that Adam Gadahn, an American who had served as a spokesman for the terror network, was killed in a separate American operation in January.....voanews.com
24/4/15