A US Navy Seal team had reportedly raided the Libyan capital and carried out a stealthy seaside assault in Somalia against Islamic extremists who have carried out terrorist attacks in East Africa, and captured a man allegedly involved in the bombings of US embassies 15 years ago.
However, the military forces reportedly failed to catch a suspect linked to last month's attack on a Nairobi shopping mall.
According to Stuff.co.nz, US and Somali officials confirmed that the Seal team landed ashore a southern Somalia town before the al Qaeda-linked militants rose for dawn prayers, in order to catch a specific al Qaeda suspect related to the Kenyan mall attack, although they failed to do so.
However, the officials further said that American forces captured Libyan al Qaeda leader Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, outside his house in Tripoli.
The US officials said there have been no US casualties in the Libya operation and described the action in Somalia as a capture operation against a high-value target.
Saturday's raid in Somalia occurred 20 years after the famous 'Black Hawk Down' battle in Mogadishu in which a mission to capture Somali warlords went awry after Somali militiamen shot down two US helicopters, following which eighteen 18 US forces were killed, the report added.