BAGHDAD — A Navy SEAL was killed Tuesday by fire from the Islamic State terrorist group outside the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged it as a “combat death” as the U.S. expands its role in the northern part of Iraq.
The Navy SEAL killed in Iraq on Tuesday was identified as Charlie Keating IV, a former Phoenix high school star distance runner and the grandson of the late Arizona financier involved in the 1980s savings and loan scandal.
He’s the third American serviceman to die in combat in Iraq since the U.S.-led coalition launched its campaign against the Islamic State in the summer of 2014, according to military officials.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey ordered all state flags be lowered to half-staff from sunrise to sunset Wednesday in honor of Keating, who also was the cousin of former Olympic swimming champion Gary Hall Jr.
Keating’s grandfather, Charles H. Keating Jr., who died in 2014 at age 90, was the notorious financier who served prison time for his role in the costliest savings and loan failure of the 1980s
Charlie Keating, 31, attended the Naval Academy before becoming a Navy SEAL based out of Coronado, Calif.
A 2004 graduate of Phoenix’s Arcadia High School, Keating was city and region champion in the 1,600-meter run as a sophomore, junior and senior.
He earned all-city and first-team all-state honors as a senior, according to Indiana University, where he ran in college.
Over the course of the nearly two-year U.S. led campaign against the terrorist group, the Pentagon has expanded the American role in Iraq slowly and has increased the presence of U.S. troops.
The Islamic State launched Tuesday’s attack on Teleskof, about 14 miles north of Mosul, just after 6 a.m., said Lt. Col. Manav Dosky, an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence officer. The Islamic State broke through the frontline position with a barrage of armored Humvees and bulldozers, Dosky said, and clashes killed at least three peshmerga fighters. Keating was among Americans advising the peshmerga during that battle.
A U.S. defense official said Keating was killed with small arms fire, suggesting that Islamic State fighters probably came within a few hundred yards of the U.S. forces.
