Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Another Combat Death in Iraq May Presage Future U.S. Role

Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Charles Keating IV.Credit...U.S. Navy

WASHINGTON — The Islamic State fighters arrived on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi town of Teleskof before dawn. Launching a sophisticated attack from multiple directions, they used armored bulldozers to plow over a protective trench so their convoy of trucks — some laden with explosives — could drive deep into the town. Residents and some local soldiers quickly fled.

A group of Navy SEALs who were in Teleskof called urgently for help. Roughly a dozen more SEALs arrived, rumbling into the town in S.U.V.s to join a firefight that would last much of the day. The long and bloody battle killed dozens of Islamic State fighters and one member of the SEALs, Special Warfare Operator First Class Charles Keating IV.

Petty Officer Keating, a decorated member of the SEALs who served both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, was a track star from Arizona and the grandson of a disgraced banker jailed in the 1990s for his role in the savings and loan scandal. As the third American to die in Iraq since the campaign against the Islamic State began, he is the most recent example of how American troops are fighting on the front lines while the Obama administration tries to play down the American role in combat there.

Tuesday’s battle in Teleskof — recounted by a witness and American officials — could presage a future in Iraq where American troops move even closer to routine, daily battle in the fight to reclaim large parts of Iraq from the Islamic State.

“We keep saying it’s supposed to be advising that we’re doing, and yet we’re losing one kid at a time,” said Phyllis Holmes, Petty Officer Keating’s maternal grandmother, in an interview on Wednesday. “Even Carter said it was a combat death,” she said, referring to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter.

“And it was one hell of a combat death.”

The battle in Teleskof began early Tuesday when volleys of mortar shells and blasts from rocket-propelled grenades disrupted meetings that the SEALs were having in the town with officials from the pesh merga, the Kurdish force battling the Islamic State in northern Iraq. Soon, a force of more than 100 Islamic State fighters punched through Kurdish checkpoints and overwhelmed the defenses on the southern edge of Teleskof, a largely Christian town about 14 miles north of Mosul.

The fighters from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had taken the town by surprise, forcing many local fighters to retreat north of the town as it was overrun. The attackers “were able to very covertly assemble enough force” to “sprint towards Teleskof,” said Col. Steve Warren, the American military spokesman in Baghdad.

The SEALs were grossly outnumbered, and radioed that they were in a “troops in contact” situation — military jargon for a firefight. Colonel Warren said that American fighter planes, bombers and drones were sent to the town, along with a second group of SEALs. That group included Petty Officer Keating.

Matthew VanDyke, who runs a security firm, Sons of Liberty International, that is training local Iraqi forces — the Nineveh Plain Forces — said that the SEALs arrived in a convoy of sport utility vehicles from the north and drove directly into Teleskof.

“They went directly into combat,” he said.

Mr. VanDyke said that one of the trucks in the SEAL convoy appeared to get hit by a rocket- propelled grenade, and that the SEALs then got out of the S.U.V.s and went further into the town on foot.

Image
A screengrab from a video taken by the Sons of Liberty International on the day Special Operator Keating was killed in Teleskof, Iraq.Credit...Matthew VanDyke/Sons of Liberty International

A pitched battle continued, with the SEALs moving among buildings in the town and calling in airstrikes. About 9:30 a.m., Colonel Warren said, one of the SEAL team members radioed for medical help. Petty Officer Keating had been shot by an Islamic State sniper in the side, in an area not covered by his bulletproof vest.

Two Black Hawk helicopters arrived, drawing fire from Islamic State fighters, but were able to evacuate Petty Officer Keating to the American military’s medical mission in Erbil. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward.

The SEALs eventually pulled out of the town after they ran out of ammunition, Mr. VanDyke said.

Eventually, several hundred Kurdish pesh merga and other local fighters were able to mass for a counteroffensive. By the end of the day, those militias had managed to expel the Islamic State fighters from Teleskof.

Although American officials have used linguistic contortions for months to present the American military role in Iraq as something other than direct combat, Mr. Carter did not hesitate on Tuesday to call Petty Officer Keating’s death a “combat death.”

Last month, the Pentagon announced that American military advisers would begin working more closely with Iraqi officers making direct battlefield decisions, a change from the previous policy of keeping Americans at Iraqi headquarters — far from the fighting.

Still, the top American general in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, insisted at the time that this would not mean more American troops would be in harm’s way.

“It’s not any closer to the enemy than it has ever been,” he said.

Since his death was announced, friends and family have remembered Petty Officer Keating, 31, as an outgoing, athletic man who never avoided using a last name made infamous by his grandfather.

Charles H. Keating Jr., who died in 2014, went to prison after defrauding thousands of people who had deposited money in savings and loan institutions. A group of senators who came to be known as the “Keating Five”— Alan Cranston of California, Donald W. Riegle Jr. of Michigan, John Glenn of Ohio and Dennis DeConcini and John McCain of Arizona — came under investigation for their extensive dealings with Mr. Keating and the regulatory help they provided him.

Mrs. Holmes, Petty Officer Keating’s maternal grandmother, said he was sometimes mocked when his last name was called out at high school track meets. But she said he remained close to his paternal grandfather until the elder Mr. Keating’s death.

“As far as Charlie was concerned, it was his grandfather who loved him,” she said.

He attended Indiana University, where he was a star member of the track team. He dropped out to join the Navy, and graduated from the grueling SEAL training course in June 2008, according to a Navy news release. He deployed both to Iraq and to Afghanistan before moving to San Diego to become a sniper trainer.

When he died on Tuesday, Petty Officer Keating was on his third tour of duty in Iraq.

Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington, and Christopher Drew from New York.

Follow The New York Times’s politics and Washington coverage on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Firefight Death in Iraq May Presage U.S. Future. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT