Obama says to take full responsibility for accidental killing of hostages

WASHINGTON, April 23 -- U.S. President Barack Obama said Thursday that he took "full responsibility" for a January counterterrorism operation against al-Qaida which accidentally killed two hostages.

"As president and as commander-in-chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren (Weinstein) and Giovanni (Lo Porto). I profoundly regret what happened," Obama told reporters.

Earlier in the day, a White House statement said that a U.S. counterterrorism operation in January killed the two hostages, held by al-Qaida in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to the statement, Weinstein was an American held by al-Qaida since 2011, and Lo Porto was an Italian national who had been an al-Qaida hostage since 2012.

"Our initial assessment indicates that this operation was fully consistent with the guidelines under which we conduct counterterrorism efforts in the region, which has been our focus for years, because it is the home of al-Qaida's leadership, and based on the intelligence that we had obtained at the time, including hundreds of hours of surveillance," said Obama.

Though stressing that intelligence about the venue as an al-Qaida compound was accurate, Obama admitted that the U.S. Army made a mistake by alleging that "no civilians were present."

"What we did not know, tragically, is that al-Qaida was hiding the presence of Warren and Giovanni in this same compound," he said, adding that he had already directed full review into the incident.

According to the White House statement, Ahmed Farouq, an American who was an al-Qaida leader, was killed in the same operation that resulted in the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto. A likely separate U.S. counterterrorism operation also killed Adam Gadahn, an American who became a prominent member of al-Qaida.