Navy Seals Kill 9 Pirates, Free American, Danish Hostages in Somali Raid

Commandos from the US Navy's SEAL Team 6 swooped into a central Somali town and raided a pirate camp where two aid workers were being held hostage in the early morning hours on Wednesday.

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA - The Navy SEALs parachuted into the darkness, landing more than 2 miles from their objective: a small bush camp in north-central Somalia where an American aid worker and a Danish colleague were being held captive.

The commandos, several dozen in all, shed their chutes and moved quietly through the brush. The compound had been under U.S. surveillance for weeks after an intelligence tip had signaled the whereabouts of the hostages, Ohio native Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Poul Thisted, 60. But investigators believed that Buchanan's health was failing and that she might suffer kidney failure. "We were told that she was not well and, left untreated, her condition could be life-threatening," said a senior U.S. official.

About 2 a.m. Wednesday, the SEALs stormed the kidnappers' compound, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having chewed the narcotic leaf khat for much of the evening, said a self-described pirate.

The aid workers and SEALs were picked up by helicopters, which flew to an airstrip at Galkayo, 60 miles north of the encampment. There the hostages were transferred to a U.S. military plane and flown to the neighboring nation of Djibouti, site of a U.S. base known as Camp Lemonnier. They would be leaving Djibouti "fairly soon," one U.S. official said.

Buchanan and Thisted were working with a Danish organization that was providing aid in clearing land mines from the area when they were abducted by a gang of kidnappers in October 2011. President Obama reportedly authorized the mission because there were concerns that Buchanan's health was deteriorating after months in captivity.

The kidnappers, who would frequently move the American and Danish hostages around to confound any rescue attempt, were not believed to be affiliated with the Islamic Al-Shabaab militia, but rather a local criminal gang with connections to pirates.

The SEALs had reportedly secured the cooperation of a local clan and the use of a local airstrip in the nearby city of Galkayo for both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft.

Somali sources said that the hostages, who had been held for three months, had been moved around central Somalia on a daily basis in an attempt to frustrate rescue operations. Kidnappers had regularly complained that they could hear aircraft over head.

Elders of the Habre Gedir have been negotiating the release of the two aid workers along with journalist Michael Scott Moore, who was kidnapped last Saturday, and British hostage Judith Tebutt who was abducted from Kiwayu in Kenya last year.

"We are very happy about this incident because the pirates are the ones causing insecurity in this region," Mohammed Omar told the Somalia Report news agency.

The spate of kidnappings by armed Somali pirates last fall- including the abduction of British tourist Judith Tebutt from a resort in northern Kenya- led to incursions into lawless Somalia by the Kenyan military in the south and the Ethiopian military in the west.

In the capital city of Mogadishu, the fragile Transitional government backed by peacekeepers from the African Union has waged a campaign against the Islamic al-Shabaab militia in Mogadishu and beyond.

The SEAL operation is thought to be the first confirmed US Military land operation since the disastrous 1993 Blackhawk Down incident in which 18 American soldiers and roughly 150 Somali fighters were killed in an ambush and running battle in Mogadishu.