Commandos In Israel

From Yahoo/NYT:

“American Commandos Are in Israel Helping to Locate Hostages, Pentagon Says”

(A demonstration outside the United Nations last week symbolizing the kidnapped hostages in Israel.)

American commandos on the ground in Israel are helping locate the more than 200 hostages seized during Hamas’ surprise cross-border attacks on Oct. 7, the Pentagon’s top special operations policy official said Tuesday. “We’re actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things,” Christopher Maier, an assistant secretary of defense, said at a special operations conference in Washington. He said a main task was to help Israel “identify hostages, including American hostages. It’s really our responsibility to do so.”

Maier declined to say how many U.S. Special Operations forces were currently in Israel. But other U.S. officials say the Defense Department has dispatched several dozen commandos in recent weeks, in addition to a small team that was in Israel on Oct. 7 conducting previously scheduled training. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said the commandos would join FBI, State Department and other U.S. government hostage-recovery specialists in their discussions with Israeli counterparts.

The U.S. Special Operations forces are not assigned any combatant roles in Israel, but they are talking through with their Israeli counterparts “what is going to be a very complex fight going forward” in the Gaza Strip, Maier said. In his discussions with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has stressed the need for careful consideration of how Israeli forces conduct a ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas maintains an intricate network of tunnels under densely populated areas. “We will work with them as much as possible to help advise them on those types of activities,” Maier said.

Several Western countries have secretly moved small teams of their own special forces closer to Israel to help with any potential rescue operation and to be nearby to assist in any large-scale evacuations of their citizens from Israel or Lebanon.

Maier said U.S. Special Operations forces in the region are also poised “to help our own citizens get out of places and to help our embassies be secure.” US officials are intently focused on trying to secure the release of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza – among them American citizens – a task that sources said is now further complicated by Israel’s expansion of its ground operations into Gaza. The US remains a part of the ongoing talks that include Israel, Qatar, Egypt and Hamas to get a large group of hostages out of Gaza, and officials are now contending with Israel pressing forward with ground operations into the strip. Biden administration officials have been calling on Israel to consider so-called humanitarian pauses that can allow for civilians in Gaza, including hostages, to exit, and for aid to get in. Offering a glimpse into how unpredictable and fluid the situation remains, a senior US official told CNN on Monday that they believed the prospects of getting hostages out could be described as “50/50.”

The Israeli military says that 240 people are being held hostage by Hamas. Five hostages have been released so far. Israeli soldier Ori Megidish was freed during ground operations in Gaza on 29 October. Two women, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifschitz, were freed on Monday 24 October. On Friday 20 October, two US hostages - a mother and daughter - were also freed. Hamas says it has hidden the hostages in "safe places and tunnels" within Gaza. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have previously said the hostages include 20 children and between 10 and 20 over-60s.

^ Every Country has to do whatever they can to get their Hostages back alive. ^

https://www.yahoo.com/news/american-commandos-israel-helping-locate-120149442.html