Washington: Amid the Hamas surprise attack on Israel, over 200 hostages are being held by the terror group. Now American commandos have been deployed in Israel to locate the hostages, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. It reported, quoting Christopher P. Maier, an assistant secretary of defence in the US, “We’re actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things”. He added that a main task was to help Israel “identify hostages, including American hostages. It’s really our responsibility to do so.”
A US official sharing about the deployment said that the Defence Department has dispatched several dozen commandos in recent days, in addition to a small team that was in Israel on October 7, but declined to give the specific number of the security forces deployment. The New York Times reported that the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said the commandos would join the FBI, State Department and other US government hostages’ recovery specialists in their talks with Israeli counterparts. US forces are not assigned any combatant roles in Israel but are coordinating with Israeli “counterparts on what is going to be a very complex fight going forward” in Gaza, Maier said. Defence Secretary Lloyd J. Austin II has stressed the need for consideration of how Israel conducts a ground invasion.
