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 defence, said at a 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 US Special Operations forces were currently in Israel. But other US officials say the defence department has dispatched several dozen commandos in recent weeks, in addition to a small team that was in Israel on October 7 conducting previously scheduled training. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the commandos would join FBI, state department and other US government hostage-recovery specialists in their discussions with Israeli counterparts.
The US 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 talks with his Israeli counterpart, defence secretary Lloyd Austin has stressed the need for careful consideration of how Israeli forces conduct a ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas maintains a network of tunnels. “We will work with them as much as possible to help advise them on those types of activities,” Maier said. He said US s forces in the region are also poised “to help our own citizens get out of places and to help our embassies be secure.”