61°F
weather icon Mostly Clear

US shares hard lessons with Israel

The prospect of Israeli forces launching an assault into Gaza’s dense urban neighborhoods, where terrorists use civilians as human shields, brings back searing memories of the deadly battles the U.S.-led coalition fought against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

For Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his military leaders, that intense combat and the thousands of civilians killed in airstrikes and neighborhood gunfights in Mosul and Raqqa are lessons to be shared as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion against Hamas.

“In our conversations with the Israelis, and as we’ve made very clear, we’re continuing to highlight the importance of mitigating civilian casualties and ensuring that … things like safety corridors are thought through,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday.

The U.S. can paint a vivid picture of civilian slaughter. During the eight-month siege to liberate Mosul from Islamic insurgents, as many as 10,000 people were killed, including at least 3,200 civilians from airstrikes, artillery fire or mortar rounds between October 2016 and the fall of the Islamic State group in July 2017.

Austin; Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Eric Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command; and other senior military commanders all spent time in the region around then and watched the violence unfold.

“Sharing our 20 years of lessons learned is occurring up and down the chain,” said Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey, the spokesman for Brown.

Underscoring that priority, the United States has sent a team of military advisers to Israel, including Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Glynn, who helped lead special operations forces against the Islamic State group.

Glynn, who also served in Fallujah during some of the most heated urban combat there at the height of the Iraq War, will be able to advise the Israelis on how to mitigate civilian casualties in urban warfare.

“These officials include Gen. Glenn, have experience when it comes to urban combat,” Ryder told reporters Tuesday. “They’re in there temporarily with their military expertise to just go through and discuss some of the hard questions that the IDF should consider as they plan various scenarios.”

THE LATEST
Biden proposes Medicare and Medicaid cover costly weight-loss drugs

Millions of Americans with obesity would be eligible to have popular weight-loss drugs like Wegovy or Zepbound covered by Medicare or Medicaid under a new rule the Biden administration proposed Tuesday morning.

‘Busiest Thanksgiving ever’: How TSA plans to handle record air travel

Just as there are good odds the turkey will taste dry, airports and highways are expected to be jam-packed during Thanksgiving week, a holiday period likely to end in another record day for air travel in the United States.

Israel says rabbi who went missing in the UAE was killed

Israel said the body of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found after he was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident.”