Green Berets ambushed in Niger were gathering info on terrorist: report

The U.S. soldiers involved in the deadly Niger ambush earlier this month were gathering intelligence on a terrorist leader in the area, CNN reported.

Two military officials told CNN that the unit was not on a kill or capture mission on the leader.

Four Army Green Berets were killed and two were wounded in the Oct. 4 attack near the village of Tongo Tongo. The group of 12 U.S. soldiers and 30 to 40 Nigerien troops were ambushed coming back from a reconnaissance mission in the village. Five Nigerien soldiers were also killed.

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CNN also reported that the U.S. team had arrived in the country weeks earlier and it was one of their first patrols in the country.

Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told reporters earlier this month that U.S. and Nigerien forces had “done 29 patrols without contact over the previous six months or so,” with no indication that such an ambush would occur.

The unnamed officials explained that the 29 patrols were conducted by the task force as a whole.

Questions still remain after the attack, and the Defense Department as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation have launched investigations to determine what went wrong and why four soldiers wound up dead.

Major Gen. Roger Cloutier, chief of staff to the commander of U.S. Africa Command, is leading the formal investigation within the Defense Department, CNN reported.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford appeared at an impromptu Pentagon press conference Monday to assure the public, media and Congress he would keep them informed of the investigation into the ambush.

“I think we owe the families and American people transparency,” Dunford said.

Dunford did not, however, reveal many new details. Whether the nature of the mission changed from reconnaissance to something else and whether the United States has enough intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance support in the region, will be answered in the investigation, he said.

“I don’t have any indication right now to believe or to know that they did anything other than operate within the orders that they were given,” Dunford told reporters.