WATCH: US-Kurdish raid frees dozens of Islamic State hostages
New footage said to show rescue operation of 70 captives held by terrorist group; 1 US soldier killed during operation
The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq on Sunday released a video purportedly showing a raid on a prison by US and Kurdish peshmerga forces that freed 70 hostages held by the radical Islamic State group.
The helmet camera footage shows a line of panicked men in traditional ankle-length garments running past the camera, some with their hands up, as Arabic-speaking men scream, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
Officials later said about 20 of the rescued hostages were members of Iraqi security forces.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the raid was undertaken at the request of the Kurdistan Regional Government and was deliberately planned and launched after “receiving information that the hostages faced imminent mass execution.”
The raid Thursday at the prison in Hawija town, 15 kilometers (9 miles) west of Kirkuk, marked the first time US troops were involved in direct ground combat in Iraq since the war against the Islamic State was launched in August 2014. One American died in the raid.
The Pentagon on Friday identified the fatally wounded American soldier as 39-year-old Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler.
Officials said Wheeler, a 20-year Army veteran and Oklahoma native, was killed by small arms fire when he and dozens of other US special operations troops participated in the hostage rescue mission.
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US Defense Secretary Ash Carter praised Wheeler for voluntarily inserting himself into the firefight to defend Kurdish soldiers, even though the plan called for the Kurds to do the fighting.
“This is someone who saw the team that he was advising and assisting coming under attack, and he rushed to help them and made it possible for them to be effective, and in doing that lost his own life,” Carter told a Pentagon news conference on Friday.
Carter portrayed Wheeler as a hero and said he would be present when Wheeler’s body returned to the US the following day.
The defense chief gave the most extensive public description yet of what transpired during the pre-dawn raid on an Islamic State prison compound near the town of Hawija. About 70 people, including at least 20 members of the Iraqi security forces, were freed.
Carter said he expects US forces to be involved in additional such raids against Islamic State targets, describing it as part and parcel of what the Pentagon calls a “train, advise and assist” mission in support of Iraqi forces. At one point he said, “It doesn’t represent assuming a combat role” — but later, in noting that it is difficult to see the full picture of what happened during the Hawija raid, he said: “This is combat. It’s complex.”
After his remarks at the Pentagon, other US officials said the plan for the rescue mission had called for the US special operations troops, who are members of the elite and secretive Delta Force, to stay back from the prison compound and let the Kurds do the fighting. The Americans transported the Kurds to the scene aboard five US helicopters.
Carter said the US and its Kurdish partners collected valuable intelligence at the scene, including documents and electronics. This, he said, shows “the great value of raids of this kind, and I expect we’ll do more of these kinds of things.”
In explaining his decision to approve the use of US troops to support the Kurds in their rescue mission, Carter said there was intelligence indicating that those inside the prison compound faced mass execution by their Islamic State captors.
“Their graves had already been prepared,” he said. Asked how he knew this, Carter said, “It happens that we had seen that beforehand. We were watching this compound” after Kurdish authorities determined that it held numerous hostages.
“The graves were right next door to the compound,” he said, adding that although it was impossible to know for certain that their purpose was to dispose of executed prisoners, “it sure looked like that.”
The Times of Israel Community.