u.s. commander about why the accelerated effort on the ground in syria against the group. >> there's an imperative to get isolation in place around raqqah because our intelligence feeds tell us that there is a significant external operations attacks planning. >> reporter: al qaeda's affiliate in yemen, aqap, has for years been actively trying to target commercial airliners destined for the u.s. looking for ways to create bombs that contain little or no metal content to evade airport security measures including hiding exclusives in the batteries of electronic devices like laptops. and in february of 2016 a wake-up call when a laptop bomb according to somali authorities was used to blow a hole in this somali passenger jet. the plane landed safely despite the attack, claimed by the al