A Navy SEAL from the Valley who was based out of Coronado, California, was killed Tuesday by a sniper’s bullet in the fight against ISIS overseas.
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Keating, who died in the gunfight, was known in Phoenix for his family name but forged his own path as a high school and college track star and then as a Navy SEAL.
“Like so many courageous Americans who came before him, Charlie sacrificed his life in honorable service to our nation for a cause greater than self-interest, which we can never truly repay”, U.S. Sen.
Carter said the troops are working to help and equip local forces to take back territory from ISIS.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced last month that the Pentagon would send 217 more advisors to Iraq and allow them to accompany Iraqi troops at the battalion level instead of being confined to Iraqi division headquarters.
Keating, 31, died in combat in the town of Tel Askuf, likely from AK-47 fire, officials said.
Presumably, U.S. troops performing that mission are not on forward edge of the front lines and do not directly participate in fighting.
The NAVY Seal killed in battle with the Islamic State near Mosul, Iraq, has been identified as Arizona native Charlie Keating IV.
The SEAL was killed by enemy fire about 9:30 a.m., USA military officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information publicly.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that troops in Iraq aren’t part of a combat mission.
“We also agreed that all of our friends and allies across the counter-ISIS coalition can and must do more as well, both to confront ISIS in Iraq and Syria and its metastases elsewhere”.
“They are taking grave risks to protect our country”.
Norwegian Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide told Reuters that the ministers discussed ways to escalate the military fight against ISIS and deal with concurrent humanitarian crises but that it was clear more hard work remained.
Keating was the grandson of Charles Keating Jr., who was involved in a massive savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s and 1990s, in which thousands of small financial institutions failed.
He died in 2014 at age 90.
“He had this way about him that was inspiring”, John Reniewicki said.
“Because they blend in so well with the population and are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from the population when using long-distance surveillance technology, they can mass and attack at the time and place of its choosing”, he added.
The ISIS attack comprised 400 fighters and multiple auto bombs and suicide bombers.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the death occurred during an IS attack on one of the Kurdish peshmerga forces’ positions north of Iraq’s jihadist-held second city Mosul.
Coalition and peshmerga reports indicate Mosul is heavily defended by multiple rings of improvised explosive devices and booby traps.
Col Warren said IS fighters launched a large, complex attack on the peshmerga there with armoured Humvees and bulldozers, and broke through the front lines.
He said he witnessed the attack that mortally wounded the Navy SEAL, when a US military contingent came to assist their struggling forces.
Fighting was ongoing and Kurdish authorities had sealed off roads to the area for safety.
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Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is the Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.
