The first U.S. service member to die in the ground fight against ISIS in Iraq has been identified as 39-year-old Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler of Roland, Oklahoma.
(FOX)
Pentagon officials say he died from enemy fire during the operation to free as many as 70 Arab hostages from an ISIS prison in northern Iraq. They say he was assigned to Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Dozens of U.S. special operations troops and Iraqi forces raided the northern Iraqi compound Thursday, killing and capturing a number of militants, and recovering what the Pentagon called a trove of valuable intelligence about the terrorist organization.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the target of the raid was a prison near the town of Hawija and that the raid was undertaken at the request of the Kurdish Regional Government, the semi-autonomous body that governs the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. He said U.S. special operations forces supported what he called an Iraqi peshmerga rescue operation.
The peshmerga are the Kurdish region’s organized militia. The U.S. has worked closely with them in training and advising roles, but this was the first known instance of U.S. ground forces operating alongside Iraqi forces in combat since launching Operation Inherent Resolve last year.
“This operation was deliberately planned and launched after receiving information that the hostages faced imminent mass execution,” Cook said, adding later that it appeared the hostages faced death “perhaps within hours” and that freed hostages told authorities some had been killed at the prison recently, prior to the rescue.
U.S. combat troops have rarely, if ever, participated directly in combat against IS fighters on the ground since the U.S. mission began in 2014. The U.S. has mostly limited its role to training and advising Iraqi and Kurdish forces, airdropping humanitarian relief supplies and providing daily airstrikes in ISIS-held areas of Iraq and Syria.
Cook said it was a “unique” circumstance for the American military in Iraq, although he would not say that it was the only time U.S. forces have engaged in a form of ground combat in Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. He said it was in keeping with the parameters of the U.S. military’s role in Iraq. (Read More)