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U.S. forces extensively rehearsed a secret raid to take out a senior Islamic State financial operative this week, using a specially-built recreation of the rugged target area, U.S. officials said.
The Pentagon revealed on Thursday that U.S. forces conducted an assault in northern Somalia the day before and killed Bilal-al-Sudani, an ISIS leader in the country who has played a key role funding operations around the world — including in Afghanistan where 13 US service members were killed in a 2021 ISIS bombing — and growing the group's presence in Africa.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the raid “resulted in the death of a number of ISIS members.” A senior Biden administration official told reporters that 10 other fighters were killed by U.S. forces. No civilians or U.S. troops were injured during the operation, they said.
To carry out the operation, the official said special forces rehearsed the operation at sites that were specifically built to recreate, or simulate, the terrain — a remote, mountainous cave complex — where the operation would eventually take place.
This preparation and training strategy is similar to one used by Navy SEAL forces ahead of the dramatic 2011 Neptune Spear raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Admiral William McRaven, who planned and executed that raid in Pakistan, wrote in his 2019 book “Sea Stories” that the CIA…
