Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday that a Navy SEAL who was killed while fighting the ISIS in northern Iraq “died in combat.”
“He was in a firefight and he died in combat, so let me be very, very clear about that,” Carter told reporters in Germany, according to the Washington Examiner. “We are participants in this, and I just want to be clear. This young man found himself in combat, and sacrificed for this campaign’s success accordingly.”
Pentagon officials said Charles Keating IV, 31, died as a result of a “coordinated and complex attack” by about 100 ISIS fighters against Kurdish peshmerga forces.
He is the third American combat casualty since the U.S. redeployed forces to Iraq in 2014.
There are more than 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, serving in advisory and security roles.
Carter said the troops are working to help and equip local forces to take back territory from ISIS.
“But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to do any fighting at all as a coalition,” Carter said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that troops in Iraq aren’t part of a combat mission.
“The relatively small number of U.S. service members that are involved in these operations are not in combat but are in a dangerous place,” Earnest said.
Source: Hill, 4 May 2016
