An American serviceman has been killed in northern Iraq, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Tuesday, marking the third U.S. combat death in the country during the campaign against the Islamic State.
Carter announced the death during a visit to Stuttgart, Germany. U.S. Central Command said the service member was killed in northern Iraq as a result of “enemy fire.”
The U.S. military adviser was killed about 9:30 a.m. after Islamic State fighters penetrated a front line of Kurdish peshmerga forces about 20 miles north of Mosul, said a U.S. military official speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information publicly.
The service member, who was about two to three miles from the front lines, was killed by “direct fire,” the official said. No other coalition casualties were reported in the attack, which involved Islamic State “truck bombs supported by infantry,” he said.
American advisers in Iraq are moving out of the confines of more established Iraqi bases to give closer support to troops as they attempt to push forward toward the Islamic State’s stronghold of Mosul, the militants’ key stronghold in Iraq. But that is also putting U.S. troops closer to danger.
“This sad news is a reminder of the dangers our men and women in uniform face everyday in the ongoing fight to destroy ISIL and end the threat the group poses to the United States and the rest of the world,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State. The serviceman will be identified after next of kin are informed, he said.
A Kurdish official said that the U.S. serviceman was injured in the attack on peshmerga lines near Telskuf, which began about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday. He died as he was being transported out of the area, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
The Islamic State used three vehicles packed with explosives during the attack, in which Kurdish soldiers also died, he said, adding that he did not have details on the number of casualties.
U.S. Army Special Forces operate across peshmerga front lines, often spending hours at outposts gathering information about the Islamic State’s activity.
The small detachments, however, are usually stationed a few miles from the front to help coordinate airstrikes between peshmerga fighters and the joint command centers in Baghdad and Irbil, the administrative center of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
Some 200 U.S. Marines are also now stationed less than 10 miles from the front line, near the northern town of Makhmour, where Iraqi troops are building up for a future Mosul offensive. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin was killed there in a March 19 rocket attack.
In October, Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler died assisting Kurdish forces on an Islamic State prison near the Iraqi city of Hawija.