US, Italian hostages killed in US anti-terror operation

Two Western hostages and one American citizen-turned-terrorist were killed in a United States anti-terrorist operation on the Afghan-Pakistani border in January, the White House said Thursday.
President Barack Obama, speaking to the White House press, expressed his "tremendous sorrow" that the operation ended in the deaths of the two hostages, one of whom was a US citizen and the other an Italian being held by the al-Qaeda terrorist network, reports dpa.
"Our hearts go out to the families of Dr Warren Weinstein, an American held by al-Qaeda since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian national who had been an al-Qaeda hostage since 2012," Obama said.
"No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy," he said.
The two died when US intelligence targeted the compound where they were being held without knowing that they were there, the statement said.
"Based on the intelligence that we had obtained at the time, including hundreds of hours of surveillance, we believed that this was an al-Qaeda compound; that no civilians were present; and that capturing these terrorists was not possible," Obama said.
The White House did not reveal what weapon was used, but media reports speculated that it was a drone attack.
A second US citizen was also killed in the operation - Ahmed Farouq, a US citizen who had become an al-Qaeda leader, the White House said. It was not clear how many other non-Americans were killed in the operation. Obama said it is believed the operation took out "dangerous members" of al-Qaeda.
Weinstein, 73, was kidnapped in August 2011 in Lahore, Pakistan, where he was working on anti-poverty projects as a USAID contractor. His al-Qaeda captors had released several videos of him over the years, including one in 2013 where he challenges Obama to get him out.
He felt "totally abandoned and forgotten," he said.
Lo Porto, 39, was kidnapped in January 2012 along with another humanitarian worker from Germany, Bernd Muehlenbeck, in the city of Multan, in the Punjab region. The kidnapping was carried out by Pakistan Taliban, TTP, which handed them over to al-Qaeda-related groups, according to information from extremist sources at the time.
They were working for a German NGO, Welthungerhilfe. Muehlenbeck was freed in October 2014.
In a separate counterterrorism operation in January in the region, the White House identified a third US-born citizen who had been killed - Adam Gadahn, "an American who became a prominent member of al-Qaeda."
The FBI had offered a 1-million-dollar reward for Gadahn, 36, who has appeared in videos produced by al-Qaeda since 2004.
Obama said he took "full responsibility" for the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto. He said he wanted to "provide the American people with as much information as possible about our counterterrorism operations, particularly when they take the lives of fellow citizens."
The "operation was lawful and conducted consistent with our counterterrorism policies," the statement said.