Word: commandos
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...some 60 "supergendarmes" deployed in four units of 15 men each. Highly trained and motivated, they specialize in such crisis situations as hostage takings and hijackings. Their commander was Major Denis Favier, 35, a brilliant graduate of France's top military school but a man who some of the commando veterans felt had been prematurely promoted and was thus unprepared to lead a dangerous mission. The gendarmes' plane put down in Spain, at the airport of Palma de Mallorca, 200 miles north of Algiers, to await developments. The squad learned that the Algerians would not allow it on their soil...
...former Yugoslavia almost a half-century ago. Bosnian army units, some with barely 100 men, began ambushing Serb forces at 16 different locations around the country. Instead of the frontal assaults that foundered against the Serbs' superior firepower, says U.N. spokesman Paul Risley in Zagreb, the Bosnians "are employing commando tactics to grab territory." The breadth of the government offensive has exposed how thin the Serb defenses are: reinforcements dispatched to the Bihac region came from Kupres, for example, leaving it largely undefended...
...whole of Israel recoiled in horror. Only 10 days earlier, Souwi's cohorts in the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, had kidnapped an Israeli soldier, eventually executing him and killing one commando involved in a rescue attempt. Others had sprayed a pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem with machine-gun fire, killing two. Now Tel Aviv, the country's most cosmopolitan and carefree city, where Israelis feel most removed from the conflict with their neighbors, was under attack. The force of Souwi's bomb was so intense that the bus was reduced to fragments. Parts of victims were blown ; through windows...
Later that same day, after the kidnapped soldier and an Israeli commando were killed in a failed hostage rescue attempt, Rabin grew even more solemn. "I would say that I would be happy to give back the Nobel Peace Prize to bring back to life both of the soldiers who fell," he said. A moving, if symbolic offer...
Allen now says he regrets that decision because the CIA's reconnaissance team performed poorly. No Americans were included. The team was led by a former Royal Laotian Air Force pilot with no commando experience; his main qualifications for the job seemed to be that the CIA trusted him and he was familiar with the Nhommarath area. The team's radios were antiquated. CIA and Delta Force officials say agency staff members who went to a Chicago mountaineering shop to outfit the team with climbing equipment purchased white rope; JSOC officers sent them olive-green rope that would...