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Pulitzer Center grantee Iona Craig's reporting for The Intercept on the U.S. raid in Yemen against Al-Qaeda militants was picked up by major media outlets like Poynter, Vanity Fair, CNN, The Huffington Post, and The Independent.
In her reporting, Craig traces the impact of the U.S. government's raid on the residents of Al Ghayil, the town where the U.S. combat action approved by President Donald Trump took place. She interviewed Yemeni villagers and current and former military officials, concluding that the raid was not "highly successful" as President Doanld Trump had previously stated.
James Warren, Chief Media Writer for Poynter, wrote in an opinion piece for Poynter and Vanity Fair, that the collaboration between the Pulitzer Center and The Intercept was "revealing" and "would appear to demolish Trump claims."
In a video interview with CNN, Craig said that the raid was "a clear sign of bad judgement." She added: "[They continued] the raids when they knew they were compromised, they knew that people inside the village knew they were coming, possibly Al-Qaeda knew they were coming, but still they decided to carry on."
The Huffington Post's story focuses on eyewitness accounts of the Yemen raid and said that Craig's story "laid bare the reality of what actually happened through interviews with survivors of the raid in the village of al Ghayil in Yemen’s al Bayda province."
The Independent's feature on the coflict in Yemen and Trump's involvement in it quoted parts of Craig's story and said that her reporting "convincingly rebuts the official version of events, little of which appears to be true."
The story "Yemen: Death in Al Ghayil" is part of Craig's ongoing project with the Pulitzer Center, "Yemen: Two Years of War," in which she traces the impact of war on this battered and divided country.