Kurdish commandos supported by some Delta Force teams raided an Islamic State facility near Hawija on Friday evening, killing numerous terrorists. This is what the Kirkuk police commander told the Kurdish agency Rudaw. It should be noted that the Pentagon has not yet commented on the raid, even if the news of the raid has now gone around the world.
The numerous teams involved, supported by heavy helicopters and gunboats in the role of cover, raided at 23pm last Friday, in the court of the city of Riyadh, east of Hawija. The mission's goal was to free the prisoners held inside the facility. According to the Kirkuk police, several terrorists have been eliminated.
The Delta Force would also have eliminated Hussein Umair Assafi, commander of the prison. There is no information on the number of freed Kurdish peshmerga soldiers. The US commando, considering that the raid took place last Friday, did not report any losses.
This is the second operation against the Islamic State, in just under two months, conducted by US special forces. In a similar operation, last October, American and Kurdish special forces stormed a prison in Hawija and freed 70 hostages. In that juncture, the US also lost a Delta element, Sergeant Joshua Wheeler.
The operation was conducted by the Delta Force, although this will not appear in the Pentagon report which is expected shortly. In fact, the US military does not even recognize the existence of the Delta, as do other top secret units that the Americans themselves ignore. These teams are directly employed by the Joint Special Operations Command and have carried out some of the largest operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Unlike the advertised (and at home loved) SEALs of the Navy, almost nothing is known about the Delta Force.
We know that Delta operators went into action on September 11, 2012 in the State Department personnel rescue mission during the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya. The Delta also captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, one of the terrorists involved in planning the attack, in June 2014. A month after that operation, a Delta Force commando went into action in an attempt to rescue a number of American hostages in Syria. , including American aid worker Kayla Mueller and journalist James Foley. The Mission failed with the deaths of Mueller and Foley. A Delta commando killed Abu Sayyaf, Syria, captured his wife and freed the couple's slave girl.
After the operation failed Eagle Claw, in the 1980, in Iran, all the units of the American antiterrorism were revised, reworked and shaped. The Delta were used in the invasions of Granada and Panama and in the search for the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. In the 1993, the Delta suffered a harsh lesson in Somalia in the failed assault that was supposed to lead to the annihilation of the chain of command of the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. In that mission (planned in a completely "superficial" way), 18 American soldiers died: among these five Delta. After the September 11, the Delta Force was used to eliminate the al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.
Delta, Seal and other JSOC teams have a virtually “unlimited” budget that cannot be curtailed by law. Since last October, all US special forces have received carte blanche in the fight against global terrorism.
The prison where Sergeant Joshua Wheeler lost his life was razed to the ground immediately after the raid by a heavy carpet bombing. "The Air Force and the Marines threw everything they had in flight at that moment at him." In this way the valiant operator of the special departments was honored.
(photo: Navy SEALs)
