The New York Times provided new details about the operation to kill Bilal al-Sudani, a senior ISIS official in Somalia, at the end of last month.
A dozen commando fighters of Team 6 of the Sea Lion Unit - the only one that killed Osama bin Laden - took off in Chinook helicopters from a tank A small cruise of the US Navy off the coast of Somalia.
The fighters landed far from the cave complex where al-Sudani's headquarters was located in northern Somalia and advanced on foot.
The goal was to capture al-Sudani, but instead a firefight ensued that lasted an hour and at the end of it he was killed along with ten of his men. The fighters collected computers and drives that may help in future missions against terrorism.
Al-Sudani has been under US sanctions since 2012 for his ties to al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda's branch in Somalia. However, when the Americans investigated the attack by the ISIS branch in Afghanistan at the Kabul airport during the withdrawal in August 2021, in which 13 American soldiers were also killed, it became clear that al-Sudani financed the activities of ISIS in the country.