Serving and retired officers say soldiers also tried to convince French jets to engage in incident in which four US soldiers died 
 
 The US special forces detachment ambushed in the Niger last month fought alone for hours after the local Nigerien forces they were accompanying fled in the first minutes of the engagement, retired and serving special forces officers with knowledge of events have said. 
 
 The trapped soldiers also made repeated efforts to convince French warplanes sent from neighbouring Mali to engage the enemy, attempting to “talk in” the pilots who refused to attack due to poor weather, rough terrain and an inability to differentiate friend from foe, the officers said. 
 
 Four US soldiers and five Nigerien troops died in the incident, which has been the focus of an intense debate in Washington over the executive branch’s extensive powers to use military force abroad without congressional approval and with little oversight. 
 
 The Niger incident has been described as an “intelligence failure” by the Republican senator John McCain, who blamed it on budget cuts. 
 
 The US troops were part of a “train and equip” programme, but the incident has prompted questions in Congress on where such missions blur into counter-terrorist combat. 
 
 Controversy flared after Trump was accused of mishandling a phone call to the widow of La David Johnson, one of the dead soldiers. 
 
 Timeline How the controversy over Trump's condolence call unfolded Show Hide 
 
 Soldiers killed in Niger Four US army special forces troops and five soldiers from Niger die in an ambush during a joint patrol in the south-west of the country. The row begins Asked why he has not spoken about the incident, Trump discusses his calls to bereaved families, saying: “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls – a lot of them didn’t make calls.” Trump drags White House chief of staff John Kelly into the developing row, saying: “You could ask Gen Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?”, a reference to the death of Kelly's son in Afghanistan. Trump phones the widow of Sgt La David Johnson and reportedly says Johnson “knew what he was signing up for”, according to Frederica Wilson, a Democratic congresswomen who heard the call. Wilson criticizes Trump's reported remark as "so insensitive". In response, Trump claims Wilson's account is “totally fabricated” but Johnson's mother supports Wilson's version of events. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Kelly is “disgusted and frustrated” by the politicization of his son's death – even though it was Trump who first mentioned him. Enter John Kelly Kelly delivers a rebuke to critics of Trump in an emotional press conference but fails to acknowledge that the controversy began after Trump attacked Obama. Sanders says it would be “highly inappropriate” to question Kelly, a four-star general, a comment that causes outcry in itself. On the day of Sgt Johnson’s funeral, Trump refuses to let the matter rest, referring to Wilson as "Wacky Congresswoman Wilson" in a tweet. Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt Johnson, says Trump's condolence call "made me cry even worse". Trump disputes her account immediately after the interview aires. 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Pentagon has launched a special investigation to be carried out by officers from US Africa Command, which is due to report within two months. A defence department spokesman said that there would be no further comment on the incident until then. But defence department leaks have fuelled anger within the US special forces community at what one retired senior officer called “a massive blame game”. 
 
 “To them, it is obviously the [soldiers’ own] fault and error on a ‘routine’ training and advisory mission in Niger,” he wrote in an email to other members of the community, seen by the Guardian. 
 
 US special forces deaths in Niger lift veil on shadow war against Islamists in Sahel Read more 
 
 The email contains new details of the engagement, which took place on the immediate outskirts of the remote village of Tongo Tongo in south-western Niger, in the centre of the volatile Sahel region. 
 
 The Pentagon has said the unit that was attacked comprised 12 soldiers from the 3rd Special Forces Group which had recently arrived in Niger for a six-month tour, and about 30 Nigerien troops. 
 
 The ambush took place at 11:40pm on 4 October after the unit had spent two hours in Tongo Tongo, talking to local elders. The previous night, the Americans had destroyed a camp used by Djoundjoun Cheiffou, a lieutenant of Abu Waleed al-Sahraoui, an Islamic extremist based in neighbouring Mali who last year pledged allegiance to Islamic State. 
 
 Local media in Niger revealed this week that Cheffou was in detention there until 2016 when he was freed in return for the release of an Australian hostage, Jocelyn Elliott. 
 
 About 50 men attacked the US and Nigerien unit with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. 
 
 The retired special forces officer said he had been told by servicemen with detailed knowledge of the incident that “approximately half of the US/Nigerien force was allowed to pass through the ambush killzone before the ambush was sprung, trapping the rear half.” 
 
 On hearing firing, the lead group of soldiers turned around to engage the militants. 
 
 “Except for those already dead or wounded, all of the Nigerien soldiers bugged out and left the Americans to fight … all by themselves. Two groups, roughly six Americans per group, fighting for their lives alone against a superior ALQ force,” the retired officer said. 
 
 A US drone was on the site of the engagement within minutes, but was unarmed. An hour passed before the trapped unit on the ground called for airstrikes against the militants who surrounded them. The delay has surprised and concerned experts and veterans. 
 
 “Airstrikes were requested as the Americans fought on. Several French Mirage fighters responded, but refused to engage citing poor weather, rough terrain and an inability to differentiate friend from foe. American SF [Special Forces] requested ‘danger close’ support and attempted to talk the CAS [close air support] in, but the French Mirages alleged continued to refuse to engage,” the officer wrote in the mail, based on his own discussions with serving and retired special forces soldiers with knowledge of the incident. 
 
 A spokesman for the French defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations. 
 
 According to a CNN account of the incident, the attackers set fire to the dry bush around the encircled special forces soldiers to cover the battleground with smoke. The account quoted a Nigerien soldier as saying that the surviving troops from the patrol were fighting off their attackers, standing back to back in a last stand, when reinforcements finally arrived. 
 
 After two hours, French special forces flown by helicopter from their base in Mali reached the site of the ambush, prompting the attackers to withdraw. The French soldiers searched the immediate vicinity and evacuated survivors, including several who were wounded. 
 
 Sgt La David Johnson: soldier at the center of dispute over Trump remarks Read more 
 
 Four US special forces soldiers were left behind. Three are thought to have been dead at the site. It is unclear when Johnson was killed, but the 25-year-old mechanic had become separated from the rest of the unit almost immediately after the ambush started, sources within the special forces community said. 
 
 The Pentagon has now said that a second team of US and Nigerien forces was close to the ambushed patrol. It was believed to have been on a mission to kill or capture al-Sahraoui. That operation was called off, and the troops eventually retrieved the bodies of three of the US soldiers several hours after the ambush had ended. 
 
 Johnson’s remains were discovered by Nigerien troops near the site of the attack two days later. 
 
 The five Nigeriens killed in the ambush died in its first moments, sources within the special forces community said. 
 
 They described how one of the light, unarmoured trucks used by the patrol became stuck in sand after the attack started. Almost all the Nigerien troops it was carrying were killed or wounded. One source said the vehicle was hit by a mortar round. 
 
 Most of the ambushed US unit had no combat experience, and had not been warned to expect any encounter with hostile forces. 
 
 This assessment has surprised some and has been a focus of congressional attention. A United Nations assessment indicated that there have been at least 46 attacks by armed groups in the districts around Tongo Tongo since February 2016. 
 
 • This article was amended on 4 November and 7 November 2017. The headline has been amended to better reflect the article’s content. An earlier version of the article said four Green Berets died. Four US soldiers died, two of whom were Green Berets. ||||| CBS News has learned one of the four American soldiers killed in the ambush in Niger may have been kidnapped by Islamic militants who opened fire on a group of U.S. and Nigerien troops in early October. 
 
 The Pentagon has not said how Sgt. La David Johnson became separated from the other soldiers. 
 
 Hundreds of bullet casings and bushes stained with blood are evidence of just how intense the fighting was at the site where the group of American and Nigerien soldiers came under heavy fire. 
 
 Terrified villagers said the battled raged on for more than two hours. 
 
 The troops had stopped for supplies in the village of Tongo Tongo when heavily armed attackers appeared on motorbikes and started shooting. 
 
 CBS News 
 
 Initially, a few fighters from a group linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) drew the troops to this spot. They burnt down that school and then pushed them in this direction to where the ambush actually took place. 
 
 When it was over, village elder Adamou Bububaker said he saw three U.S. soldiers slumped dead in their truck. 
 
 "Two of the bodies were in the vehicle and another on the ground," he said. They had been stripped of their uniforms. 
 
 But Johnson's body was found two days later, about a half a mile away. Nigerien military sources tell CBS News they believe ISIS fighters decided to try and kidnap Johnson. 
 
 The fighters later shot him and dumped his body in the bushes, his hands roped together. 
 
 Inside the Niger village where U.S. soldiers were ambushed 
 
 Nigerien military sources insist the mission was to capture a terrorist leader and not focused on reconnaissance, as the Pentagon has stated. Either way, the soldiers had been instructed to stay overnight in territory where more than a dozen extremist groups are operating. 
 
 Asked if they were taking too big of a risk, one Nigerien soldier would only answer if we did not show his face. 
 
 "Do you think you were taking too big a risk?" Patta asks. 
 
 "The Americans? Yes, they took a risk," the soldier says.
– One of four American soldiers killed in Niger last month may have been kidnapped by ISIS-linked militants before he was executed, sources say. A village elder in northern Niger tells CBS that a battle raged for more than two hours after a group of Green Berets was ambushed by attackers on motorbikes. He says after the battle was over, he saw three American soldiers dead in a truck, stripped of their uniforms. The body of Sgt. La David Johnson, however, was not found for two days and military sources tell CBS that they believe he was taken prisoner by militant who later shot him and dumped the body around half a mile away from the battle site. The military is investigating how the four soldiers became separated from their unit during the Oct.4 attack while seven other American troops were reportedly evacuated. Five Nigerien troops were also killed in the attack, though sources tell the Guardian that the Nigerian forces fled soon after the ambush, leaving the Americans to fight alone. The sources say the trapped American troops struggled to call in an attack from nearby French forces, who complained about bad weather and rough terrain. (The attack has been called a "massive intelligence failure.")