A US Navy Seal who was advising Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq has been killed by Islamic State (IS) militants, US defence officials say.
The special warfare operator was named as Charlie Keating, aged 31, from the state of Arizona.
Peshmerga officials said the militants breached the frontline north of the IS-held city of Mosul on Tuesday morning. The American was the third to be killed in combat since the US-led coalition campaign against IS began in 2014.
Although Iraqi pro-government forces have gradually pushed back IS since then with the help of US-led coalition air strikes and military advisers, the jihadist group still controls large parts of the country’s north and west.
The Navy Seal’s death was announced by US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, who said only that a serviceman had died as a result of enemy fire near Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. «It is a combat death, of course, and a very sad loss,» he told reporters in Germany. A US military official in Iraq subsequently said he was killed by «direct fire» at a Peshmerga position about 3km to 5km (2-3 miles) behind the frontline after it was penetrated by IS militants.