US embassy in Somalia issues urgent warning of potential imminent terror attacks
A general view of a Mosque in Mogadishu on March 4, 2025. (Photo by Hassan Ali Elmi/ AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — The U.S. embassy in Somalia has warned Americans that they are tracking “credible information” regarding potentially imminent terror attacks “against multiple locations in Somalia including Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport,” officials said.
The U.S. embassy in Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu said that all movements of embassy personnel have been canceled until further notice in a statement released on Tuesday.
“The U.S. Department of State level four travel advisory (“do not travel”) for Somalia remains in effect due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, health issues, kidnapping, and piracy,” U.S. officials said.
“The U.S. Embassy in Somalia reminds U.S. citizens that terrorists continue to plot kidnappings, bombings, and other attacks in Somalia,” the statement continued. “They may conduct attacks with little or no warning, targeting airports and seaports, checkpoints, government buildings, hotels, restaurants, shopping areas, and other areas where large crowds gather and Westerners frequent, as well as government, military, and Western convoys.”
Shortly after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the United States used manned fighter jets to conduct an airstrike against Islamic State targets in Somalia in early February.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the airstrike, claiming no civilians were harmed in the attack. No details were released about the targets aside from the president labeling the target as a “Senior ISIS Attack Planner.”
Hegseth said the airstrikes were carried out “at President Trump’s direction and in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia.”
The embassy warned that potential methods of attack include, but are not limited to, car bombs, suicide bombers, individual attackers and mortar fire.
“The U.S. government has extremely limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in Somalia due to the lack of a permanent consular presence in Somalia,” officials said.
The embassy warned Americans who are still in Somalia to continue to exercise vigilance, review your personal security plans, notify a trusted person of your travel and movement plans and to avoid all large crowds, gatherings and demonstrations.
Rafael Caro Quintero is one of the most-wanted individuals by U.S. law enforcement after torturing and killing a Drug Enforcement agent in 1985. (Provided by the FBI)
(WASHINGTON) — A once-powerful drug lord convicted of one of the most notorious killings in the history of the Mexican narco wars is among 29 individuals Mexico transferred Thursday to the United States, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Among those extradited is Rafael Caro Quintero, who was convicted of the 1985 torture and murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.
Camarena joined the DEA in 1974, the year after its founding.
For more than four years in Mexico, Camarena investigated the country’s biggest marijuana and cocaine traffickers.
In early 1985, close to unlocking a multibillion-dollar drug pipeline, he was kidnapped while headed to a luncheon with his wife. His capture and torture were dramatized in Season 1 of the Netflix show “Narcos.”
Quintero was arrested in Mexico and convicted of Camarena’s murder later that same year.
He was released in 2013 after serving 28 years of his 40-year sentence when a Mexican judge ruled that he had been improperly tried. Quintero promptly went into hiding, as U.S. officials stridently condemned the release.
In 2018, he was added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, with a $20 million reward available for information leading to his arrest or capture.
At the time, the FBI said that he was allegedly involved in the Sinaloa cartel and the Caro-Quintero drug trafficking organization in the region of Badiraguato in Sinaloa, Mexico, and warned that he should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.”
The criminal ringleader was once again detained in Mexico in 2022, nearly 10 years after his release.
“We will be seeking his immediate extradition to the United States so he can be tried for these crimes in the very justice system Special Agent Camarena died defending,” a statement from then-Attorney General Merrick Garland read.
That effort was fulfilled Thursday, following a staunch effort on behalf of President Donald Trump’s administration to work with Mexico to curb cartels’ activity — including the decision to designate them foreign terrorism organizations.
“Beyond the name that they give, we share with the U.S. government the fight against these groups due to the violence that they leave in the country,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in February.
The extradition comes less than a week before the U.S. is set to impose 25% tariffs on its southern neighbor.
The other 28 individuals extradited to the U.S. alongside Quintero were wanted for their links with criminal organizations for drug trafficking and other crimes, according to Mexican sources.
Notable among them are: José Ángel Canobbio Inzunza (El Güerito), El Chapito’s right-hand; Antonio Oseguera (Tony Montana), brother of wanted drug lord El Mencho from the Jalisco New Generation cartel; Miguel Ángel y Óscar Omar Treviño Morales (Z40 y Z42) from Los Zetas; and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes (El Viceroy) from the Juárez cartel.
Quintero is expected to be arraigned in Brooklyn Federal Court late Friday morning. DEA agents are expected to pack the courtroom and speak outside court after the arraignment.
ABC News’ T. Michelle Murphy contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The first flight carrying “high-threat” migrants to Guantanamo Bay arrived Tuesday evening, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
The C-17 plane took off from El Paso, Texas, and landed landed at 7:20 p.m. Eastern time, according to U.S. Transportation Command.
The 10 people on the flight were suspected members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The migrants, however, will not be co-located with existing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will have the primary guard of them.
“These 10 high-threat individuals are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities,” the Defense Department said in a Wednesday statement, calling the detention of these migrants at Guantanamo Bay a “temporary measure.” “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking this measure to ensure the safe and secure detention of these individuals until they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 29 directing the secretaries of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity” to house migrants without legal status living in the United States. The Migrant Operations Center is separate from the high-security prison facility that has been used to hold al Qaeda detainees.
“There’s a lot of space to accommodate a lot of people,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “So we’re going to use it.
“The migrants are rough, but we have some bad ones, too,” he added. “I’d like to get them out. It would be all subject to the laws of our land, and we’re looking at that to see if we can.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the flights carrying migrants to Guantanamo Bay were underway Tuesday morning, saying on Fox News, “Trump, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem are already delivering on this promise to utilize that capacity at Gitmo for illegal criminals who have broken our nation’s immigration laws and then have further committed heinous crimes against lawful American citizens here at home.”
While Trump has said the United States will work to prepare the base to hold 30,000 migrants awaiting processing to return to their home countries, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Guantanamo Bay’s high-security prison facility could house “the worst of the worst” criminals being deported.
“Where are you going to put Tren de Aragua before you send them all the way back?” Hegseth asked. “How about a maximum-security prison at Guantanamo Bay, where we have the space?”
He called the base “the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country,” including for “hardened criminals.”
“President @realdonaldtrump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That starts today,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on Tuesday. It is unclear what charges the migrants on the plane face.
“Due process will be followed, and having facilities at Guantánamo Bay will be an asset to us and the fact that we’ll have the capacity to continue to do there what we’ve always done. We’ve always had a presence of illegal immigrants there who have been detained — we’re just building out some capacity,” Noem told NBC News on Sunday. “We appreciate the partnership of the DoD in getting that up to the level that it needs to get to in order to facilitate this repatriation of people back to their countries.”
She added that it is “not the plan” to have migrants stay at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely.
As of Monday, there were about 300 service members supporting the immigrant holding operations at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, according to U.S. Southern Command. U.S. officials told ABC News that as many as 200 more Marines are expected to arrive in waves.
The Defense Department posted that the troops are at Guantanamo Bay “to prepare to expand the Migrant Operations Center” to house up to the 30,000 migrants temporarily, separate from the maximum-security prison.
“As we identify criminal illegals in our country, the military is leaning forward to help with moving them out to their home countries or someone else in the interim,” Hegseth said on Jan. 31. “Now if … they can’t go somewhere right away, they can go to Guantanamo Bay.”
Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law, told ABC News’ Phil Lipof on Jan. 29 that a “big challenge” of holding migrants at Guantanamo Bay is the large number Trump has suggested.
“I don’t know that they have the capacity for that,” said Greenberg, who noted that “in the old days and the ’90s, I think they held 21,000 at the most.”
She added that the base has long held refugees and migrants, including in the Biden administration, though in much smaller numbers, and has typically been used for those intercepted at sea rather than to hold migrants flown in from the continental U.S.
However, Greenberg noted that the reports from those who have spent time at Guantanamo Bay are “not good.”
“There was a report released in September by the International Refugee Assistance Project, which sort of detailed the conditions that migrants are held in currently at Guantanamo, which included unsanitary conditions, mistreatment, not to mention this sort of fuzzy legal status,” she said.
(LONDON) — Azerbaijani authorities investigating last week’s Azerbaijan Airlines crash in Kazakhstan are probing the “disturbing” possibility that Russian air traffic controllers may have directed the damaged plane out over the Caspian Sea, a source with knowledge of the investigation told ABC News.
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia have all opened investigations into the cause of the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 crash.
The source — who did not wish to be identified given the sensitivity of the ongoing Azerbaijani investigation — said Azerbaijani authorities have “very little doubt” that flight J2-8243 was damaged by a Russian Pantsir anti-aircraft system over Chechnya on Dec. 25.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev suggested on Sunday that the plane was shot down by Russia unintentionally, that it “was damaged from the outside on Russian territory” and was “rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare.” He cited fire from the ground for serious damage to the tail section of the aircraft and apparent shrapnel holes in its fuselage.
Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized for the plane crashing, but stopped short of saying Russia was behind a strike.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Friday said, “The investigation into the air accident is ongoing. And we do not think we have a right to give any assessments and will not do so until conclusions are drawn based on the results of the investigation. We have our own aviation authorities that can do it, and this information may come only from them.”
The source with knowledge of the investigation said the subsequent conduct of air control officials after what they suspect to be a Russian strike on the plane was a focus of the ongoing investigation into the incident, in which 38 of the 67 people on board were killed.
The aircraft was heading northwest from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to Grozny in Russia — the capital city of Russia’s Chechen Republic — when the incident occurred. At the same time, Ukrainian drones were attacking targets in Chechnya, prompting a response from Russian anti-aircraft units.
Early explanations for the crash included a collision with birds and heavy fog in the area. Some Russian media organizations also suggested Ukrainian drones collided with the plane during their attack on targets in Chechnya.
Russian authorities did not immediately close Chechen airspace, the source said, adding that this decision may have been negligent but does not appear to prove any intent by Russia to shoot down the incoming Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft.
The doomed plane flew east across the Caspian Sea to the Kazakh city of Aktau some 280 miles away — rather than landing in Chechnya or another closer airport, which was “puzzling” for investigators, according to the source.
The area was blanketed in heavy fog at the time of the incident, survivors said, forcing the aircraft to make two landing attempts at Grozny airport before it was rocked by apparent explosions on its third approach.
Russia’s Rosaviatsia air transport agency said Friday that the captain was offered other airports at which to land on account of the fog and drone alerts, but chose Aktau. It was not immediately clear which airports had been offered or why the plane didn’t land at one of them.
The investigators’ “most obvious” and “most unfortunate” theory is that Russian air traffic control officials may have directed the plane over the Caspian Sea, the source said.
That explanation, if it turns out to be true, is “disturbing” but possible, the source added.
The aircraft ultimately crashed around 2 miles from Aktau International Airport on the Caspian Sea’s eastern coast.
Putin on Saturday spoke with Aliyev and “apologized for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” a Kremlin readout said.
“At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks,” it added.
On Sunday, Aliyev said Moscow should admit responsibility for the incident and offer compensation.
“The facts are that the Azerbaijani civilian plane was damaged from outside on Russian territory, near the city of Grozny, and practically lost control,” Aliyev told state television.
Aliyev said he did not believe the damage was intentional, though expressed disappointment over alternate theories for the crash offered by Russian authorities in the immediate aftermath.
“This openly showed that the Russian side wants to hush up the issue and this, of course, does no one credit,” he said.
“Unfortunately, for the first three days we heard nothing from Russia except crazy versions,” Aliyev said.
Russia and Azerbaijan — which until 1991 was a constituent state of the Soviet Union — are both members of the Moscow-centric Commonwealth of Independent States bloc. The neighboring nations retain close political, economic and security ties.
Bilateral relations have become more important to the Kremlin since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted a collective Western effort to isolate Moscow on the international stage.
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, has pursued non-alignment and a balance in its relations with Russia and the West. The country has notably become an important source of natural gas for Europe, while also serving as a key conduit for Russian oil exports.
ABC News’ Dragana Jovanovic, Ines de la Cuetara and Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.
