Raid on Al Hathla

The raid started when U.S. Navy SEALs from DEVGRU, airlifted by helicopter to the central province of Marib, with the support of Yemeni authorities, attacked a compound on a residential block held by al-Qaeda fighters in the village of Al-Hathla. A firefight broke out, and a Lockheed AC-130 was called in. US officials said that several US soldiers were wounded during the battle, but none killed. According to US officials, US forces killed seven AQAP militants through a combination of small arms fire and precision airstrikes.[1][2][9][10]

According to reports in tribal and local Yemeni news websites and sources, at least thirty US soldiers, aided by Yemeni government soldiers, were deployed in the rural area of Al Hathla in the early hours of the day, and engaged in a gun battle with fighters from two prominent tribes in the village, Al-Moradi and Al-Aadhali. The reports said that during the ensuing fierce battle, at least seven US soldiers were killed. The reports added that no AQAP fighters had been in the area when three Boeing AH-64 Apache, and two Military transport aircraft of the US approached the village. Yemeni and U.S. officials did not confirm nor deny these reports.

Reprieve, a London-based human rights group, said it had talked to two sources from the raided village, who said that the raid went wrong from the start as the Seals opened fire on a 70-year-old partially blind man, named Nasser Al-Adhal, who had come out of his house to see what was going on, possibly to greet the US soldiers after mistaking them for visitors. On hearing al-Adhal being shot, other men then emerged from their homes, and four of them were shot dead by the Seals, according to the Reprieve account. According to Reprive investigators, they were "still trying to get a really full picture of exactly what happened, but what we do know is that Seals landed in the village, and they appear to have been trying to target a group of possible militants but in the course of the ground raid something went wrong, and they ended up killing a number of the people from the village, including a man of about 70, Nasser al-Adhal, who suffered from very bad eyesight. The four other villagers were killed when they started to argue with the Navy Seals after the shooting of Nasser al-Adhal. Six villagers were seriously injured, including another elderly man who was around 69 years old. After that, Al-Qaida fighters gathered nearby, after were alerted by the gunshots in the village and firefight ensued in which at least two of them were killed. The Navy Seals then left with the help of air support from a helicopter." A US central command spokesman, Maj. Josh Jacques, said that the Reprieve report would be investigated.[4]

On May 28, The Intercept, an online news organization, published a report about the raid, which gathered reports of five different individuals who witnessed the raid. The eyewitnesses also claimed that civilians were killed, among them two young boys. Village residents gave a list of ten names of civilians killed and wounded during the raid. 15-year-old Abdullah Saeed Salem al Adhal was shot dead as he fled from his home with women and other children. Another child, 12-year-old Othman Mohammed Saleh al Adhal, was injured but survived. An additional seven men who were guests in one house in the village were also killed, according to a senior figure in al Adhlan. He was not able to identify the guests but they appear to account for the seven Al Qaeda militants that US forces claimed were killed.[14]