Two Americans were killed in the raid: Chief Petty Officer Ryan Williams and 8-year-old Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki. Nawar was hit in the neck with a bullet and died in her grandmother's arms. An official who later described the raid said, "almost everything went wrong."

The main stream media was largely too distracted by the scandal surrounding the size of Trump's inauguration crowd to ask questions about Nawar and Ryan's deaths. Journalist Iona Craig, was able to travel to the village where the raid occurred, reported that the village was not aligned with al-Qaeda, but fighting on the side of the US support Saudi coalition in the Yemen Civil War. US officials later admitted they did not receive any significant intelligence from the raid.