Luke Daniel Somers (29 August 1981 – 6 December 2014)[4] was a British-born[5] American photojournalist who had been held hostage by the militant Islamist group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen.
[26] Friends of Luke Somers also organized petitions, vigils, Twitter pages,[27] and Facebook groups to gather support for his safe release.
[22] The mission, an assault on a cave in remote Hagr As Sai'ar District in Hadhramaut Governorate, was successful in freeing six Yemenis, an Ethiopian and a Saudi, but none of the Western hostages, including Somers, were found.
[31] On December 4, 2014, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) threatened to execute Somers within three days if the US government failed to meet unspecified demands.
[32][33] On December 6, 2014, about 40 US special operations forces were involved in the attempt to rescue Luke Somers and Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher also held by al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, which followed US drone strikes in the area.
The rescuers, backed by Yemeni ground forces, advanced within 100 meters of the compound in Shabwah Governorate when they were spotted by the militants.
When the American soldiers finally entered the building where Somers and Korkie were kept, they found both men alive, but gravely wounded.
"The callous disregard for Luke's life is more proof of the depths of AQAP's depravity, and further reason why the world must never cease in seeking to defeat their evil ideology," Obama said in a statement.