AFP, Washington :Kurdish and US forces stormed a prison of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq on Thursday, freeing some 70 captives who were facing imminent execution, the Pentagon said.A US serviceman died of wounds sustained in the pre-dawn operation, the first to be killed in action since the US-led campaign against Daesh or the IS began in Iraq in June 2014.Five IS militants were captured and several others killed in the raid on a compound near Hawijah, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said.”This operation was deliberately planned and launched after receivinginformation that the hostages faced imminent mass execution,” Cook said in a statement. The Hawijah raid marked an apparent break with the normal modus operandi of US forces, which are in Iraq to support government forces but do not directly engage in combat in line with President Barack Obama’s “no boots on the ground policy”.Cook pushed back against the suggestion that this signalled an expansion of the US role in Iraq.
