Carter: Hostages saved by United States raid already had graves dug

A U.S. service member died, becoming the first American killed in combat in Iraq since the US began its campaign against the Islamic State group.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq has identified the commando killed in a raid against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq as Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler. The 39-year-old Delta Force commando was killed Thursday in Kirkuk Province, Iraq, when he rushed into a gunfight during an overnight rescue mission that freed dozens of Iraqi hostages who were about to be slaughtered, officials told NBC News.

He was assigned to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C.

United States ground troops have rarely, if ever, participated directly in combat operations against Daesh terrorists.

And while conducting raids in the future “doesn’t represent us assuming a combat role”, Carter emphasized, “It represents a continuation of our advise and assist mission …”

Kurdish commanders told McClatchy that their fighters took the lead in the raid, backed by US special forces flown in by American aircraft. “We do not have combat formations there the way we had once upon a time in Iraq, or the way we have had in years past in Afghanistan”, Carter said.

Vann said the news of Wheeler’s death during the mission in Iraq was humbling.

Four Peshmerga soldiers were also wounded.

“Not only did our support help prevent another mass killing, we enabled those partners of ours to deliver ISIL a clear defeat”, he said. As of the end of September, its security forces had stopped 3,319 cases of smuggling from Syria, the statement said. The others were local residents and Islamic State fighters that the group had accused of spying or treason, said U.S. and Kurdish officials.

The potential for more raids of the type that freed the hostages “doesn’t represent a change in our strategy but it does represent a change in our approach to achieving it”, Carter said.

“So once again, you have the American politicians – Ashton Carter being one of them – walking a fine line between what the American people will accept and what they will support and what we have actually going on in the Middle East, which is active war in many different theatres”. In Iraq, the extremists produce between 10,000 and 20,000 barrels per day, mostly from two oil fields outside Mosul, said Ibrahim Bahr al-Oloum, a member of Iraq’s parliamentary energy committee and a former oil minister. Zack Wheeler was absent from work Friday, this time preparing to travel to the East Coast for the return of his brother’s body from Iraq.

U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford made a visit to Iraq Tuesday in order to seek assurances from the government in Baghdad that Russian Federation would not be conducting operations against ISIS on Iraqi soil. He first entered the US Army as an infantryman in 1995. The Iraqi government fears that Washington will back the Kurdish Regional Government’s (MRG) ambitions for greater control over northern Iraq’s substantial oil reserves, and even full recognition as an independent state, in exchange for Kurdish collaboration with USA operations in both Iraq and Syria.