US deploys commandos to Israel

A US Navy SEAL (left) during the 2021 US-Cyprus joint military exercise (Illustration photo: AP).

Although the US has announced that it is sending military advisers to help Israel in its fight with Hamas, Christopher Maier, Assistant Secretary of Defense, said the country has also deployed additional commando forces, the New York Times reported.

"We are actively helping the Israelis do some work," the New York Times quoted Mr. Maier as saying at a conference in Washington DC.

Mr Maier made the comments a day after Israel freed a soldier held by armed groups in Gaza, although it was not immediately clear whether US commandos had any role in the rescue.

The soldier was one of at least 245 people kidnapped after Hamas launched an offensive in southern Israel on October 7 that killed about 1,400 people. Most of those being held are civilians, some of them American citizens.

Mr. Maier, the Pentagon's senior special operations policy official, told the conference that the primary goal of US service members was "to locate hostages, including American hostages."

He said the US commandos had not been assigned any combat role but he was discussing the situation in Gaza with Israeli forces because "the upcoming war will be very complicated".

Mr. Maier did not disclose how many American commandos were operating in Israel, but the New York Times quoted other unnamed American officials as saying that several dozen had arrived in recent days.

Before October 7, a small group of US special forces arrived in Israel to participate in a previously scheduled training course.

The commandos will join the FBI, State Department and other US hostage rescue experts to work with their Israeli counterparts, unnamed officials told the New York Times .

According to the New York Times , several other Western countries have also quietly dispatched small-scale task forces near Israel to be ready to support rescue operations or help evacuate citizens from Israel or Lebanon.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/the-gioi/my-trien-khai-biet-kich-toi-israel-20231102223502721.htm