![]() ![]() The 9 minute, 15 second video appears to be shot from multiple helmet cameras on the US soldiers who died on October 4 in Tongo Tongo, Niger in an ambush by 50 ISIS militants. The ambush occurred as a unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops returned from the village near the border with Mali, where they had been hunting for a senior Islamic State member.Īt the start of the video, a group that appear to be ISIS militants are seen riding in light pickup trucks before the ambush. An estimated 50 militants armed with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades participated in the ambush, which left 21 of their number dead. ![]() The video shows heartbreaking details about the courageous last moments of the four soldiers, although it is edited with multiple cuts that make the full context of the firefight unclear. It was in this attack that Sergeant La David Johnson, 25 Staff Sergeant Bryan Black, 35 Staff Sergeant Jeremiah Johnson, 39 and Staff Sergeant Dustin Wright were killed. The distressing video looks like something from a war movie but it's real. Special Forces soldiers serving in Niger were ambushed by extremists and 4 US soldiers were killed. Watch the Maddow segment above, via MSNBC.ISIS has released a gory video showing the horrific moment U.S. If we do see the travel ban lifted I’m not sure you’d see the Chadians go back in.”įrej further noted that violence had been increasing in the area of the ambush over the past year. “Chadians didn’t want to keep their forces there forever and were at least looking to scale down. “It may have already been planned and was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Seay said. ![]() Plus, the pullout of Chadian troops isn’t necessarily related to the travel ban, as Maddow implied. I would like to think that Maddow’s researchers are more responsible.” ”Everybody that I know is appalled by this. Meanwhile, the ambush at Tongo Tongo that occurred on October 4th was at the Niger-Mali border, all the way across the country from Diffa.įrej wrote the following, citing assistant professor Laura Seay:Īny expert asked about Chadian troops battling ISIS in Niger would have said “No, that’s crazy,” Seay added. Before withdrawing on September 29th, the Chadian troops were in Diffa, near the Chad-Niger border. There is a group that split from Boko Haram to create Islamic State West Africa, but they are separate from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, the group that is reported to be behind the ambush.īeyond that, though, Chad’s troops were only in Niger to combat Boko Haram and they were based over 700 miles away from where the ambush occurred. Overall, the 25-minute segment was meant to pin the death of the four soldiers in Niger on the White House’s updated travel ban, as Maddow stated that Chad’s troop withdrawal “had an immediate effect in emboldening ISIS attacks.”īut does this hold up? According to HuffPost’s Willa Frej, not in the least.Īs Frej pointed out, the increased attacks in Niger are related to Boko Haram, not ISIS. The MSNBC anchor even cited an expert that said the travel ban decision would “put Americans in harm’s way” and that following Chad’s pullout from Niger, there has been an uptick in extremist violence. The way Maddow told it, Chad being included in the banned countries list led to the country pulling its troops out of Niger as part of an effort to fight Boko Haram. In this instance, she attempted to tie the Trump administration’s recent decision to include Chad in its travel ban to the deadly ambush in Niger that took the lives of four American soldiers. On Thursday evening, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow delivered one of her trademarked lengthy essays in which she connects the dots between a wide range of events to explain how a recent incident or situation occurred. …so no wonder Trump doesn't want to talk about Niger.
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