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UP FRONTTuesday 8 March 2016
US drone strikes hit Somalia training camp
LOLITA C. BALDOR
JOSH LEDERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S.
airstrikes bombarded an
al-Shabab training camp
in Somalia Saturday, kill-
ing more than 150 militant
fighters who were prepar-
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco speaks in
Stanford, Calif. U.S. airstrikes bombarded an al-Shabab training camp in Somalia Saturday, killing
more than 150 militant fighters who were preparing to launch a large-scale attack, likely against
African or U.S. personnel, the Pentagon said Monday, March 7, 2016.
ing to launch a large-scale
attack, likely against Afri- will focus on strikes against
can or U.S. personnel, the
Pentagon said Monday.
Multiple drones and
manned aircraft launched
missiles and bombs on the
site, called Raso Camp,
which the U.S. had been
watching for several weeks,
said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis,
a Pentagon spokesman.
News of the attack comes
as the White House an-
nounced Monday that
it will disclose how many
people have been killed by
American drones and oth-
er counterterrorism strikes
since 2009,
when President Barack
Obama took office.
Lisa Monaco, Obama’s
counterterrorism and
homeland security advis-
er, said the report will be
released “in the coming
weeks,” casting it as part
of a commitment to trans-
parency for U.S. actions
overseas. Monaco said the
figures would be disclosed
annually in the future, al-
though it will ultimately be
up to Obama’s successor
to decide whether to con-
tinue the practice.
The report will include both
combatants and civilians
the U.S. believes have died
in strikes. It won’t cover
major warzones like Iraq,
Syria and Afghanistan, but
extremist targets in other
regions such as Pakistan,
Libya, Yemen, Somalia and
other locations in North Af-
rica.
“We know that not only is
greater transparency the
right thing to do, it is the
best way to maintain the
legitimacy of our counter-
terrorism actions and the
broad support of our allies,”
Monaco said at the Coun-
cil on Foreign Relations.
The Pentagon on Mon-
day provided some details
about the Somalia strike,
which happened during
the early evening there.
Davis said it appeared that
the training was about to
come to an end,
and the operational phase
of a suspected attack was
about to start. Military forc- disclose all the places its
es from the U.S. and the Afri- drones operate, so the re-
can Union Mission in Soma-
lia (AMISOM) are routinely
working in the country, and
AP investigation alleges American
company bungled Ebola response
Davis said they could have
been the targets of al- RAPHAEL SATTER
Shabab’s planned attack. MARIA CHENG
The camp, located about Associated Press
120 miles (195 kilometers) WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. company assigned a cru-
north of Mogadishu, was cial role in the efforts to battle Ebola in Sierra Leone
destroyed, Davis said, add- made a series of costly mistakes during the 2014 out-
ing that the U.S. believes break, an Associated Press investigation has found.
there were no civilian casu- Staffers with the San Francisco-based company Meta-
biota Inc. not only misread the epidemic, they contrib-
uted to botched lab results, undermined partners and
put people at risk of the terrifying virus, according to
leaked documents and interviews with international
health responders.
The company had been tapped by the World Health
(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Organization and the Sierra Leonean government to
help fight Ebola. But internal emails from WHO and
alties. He said the U.S. esti- other international health agencies obtained by AP
mated that as many as 200 show that senior scientists were alarmed at a spate of
fighters had been at the problems in a lab shared by Metabiota and Tulane Uni-
camp, including a number versity.
of trainers. “This is a situation that WHO can no longer endorse,”
The al-Qaida-linked al- WHO outbreak expert Dr. Eric Bertherat wrote in a July
Shabab has been linked 17, 2014, email to colleagues.
to a number of attacks, Bertherat relayed reports of “total confusion” in the
including the detonation government lab split between Metabiota and Tulane
of a bomb aboard a com- at the Kenema hospital in Sierra Leone, noting there
mercial passenger jet last was “no tracking of the samples” and “absolutely no
month that forced the control on what is being done.” He said the flubbed
plane to make an emer- results were particularly dangerous given suspicion
gency landing in Mogadi- among the local population that international workers
shu. were spreading Ebola deliberately.
While sketchy details often Lawrence Gostin, director of WHO’s Collaborating
emerge about individual Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at
drone strikes, the full scope Georgetown University, said it was inexcusable that a
of the U.S. drone program company without the required expertise to respond to
— conducted by both the an outbreak was given such fundamental responsibili-
Defense Department and ties.
the CIA — has long been “It was a comedy of errors,” he said, adding that WHO
shrouded from view. And was ultimately to blame for allowing the situation to un-
the new report is not likely ravel.
to answer all of the ques- “WHO knew that this company was bungling the re-
tions. sponse and they did nothing,” Gostin said. “In any oth-
The U.S. doesn’t publicly er context, that would be called a cover-up.”
WHO officials did not return messages seeking com-
ment on the AP story.
port isn’t expected to de- Metabiota’s chief executive officer and founder, Na-
tail specific countries where than Wolfe, said there was no evidence that his com-
people died.q pany was responsible for the lab blunders.
He added that the reported squabbles were over-
blown and that any predictions made by his employ-
ees who were on loan to the Sierra Leonean govern-
ment didn’t reflect the company’s position. Metabiota
doesn’t specialize in outbreak response, he said, but
volunteered its staff and resources to Sierra Leone at a
cost to his company of about $500,000.
“We are incredibly proud about everything they did,”
he said at an interview in his office Thursday. “These
are individuals who took substantial personal risk and
worked incredibly long hours.”
Documents show that Metabiota and Tulane blamed
each other for the mistakes.
But Metabiota was criticized elsewhere too. The firm’s
employees were “systematically obstructing any at-
tempt to improve the existing surveillance system,”
WHO Ebola coordinator Philippe Barboza said in an
August 8, 2014, email. Another WHO employee, Mikiko
Senga, photographed a Metabiota presentation that
described the outbreak in Kenema as “stabilizing.”
“They are sending wrong messages,” she said. “The
outbreak is clearly not stabilizing.” q