American Special Forces Took ‘Heavy Casualties’ in Failed Offensive Against Hamas - Retired U.S. Army Colonel Reports

Military Watch:

American Special Forces Took ‘Heavy Casualties’ in Failed Offensive Against Hamas - Retired U.S. Army Colonel Reports


October-26th-2023

Hamas Militiaman and U.S. Army Special Forces Serviceman


The United States has reportedly deployed special operations forces for joint offensives with the Israeli Defence Forces against the Gaza based Palestinian militia Hamas. 

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor, speaking to talk show host Tucker Carlson, reported on October 25 regarding to this effect: 

“In the last 24 hours or so, some of our Special Ops forces and Israeli Special Ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact, and they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it.” 

While the United States and Israeli have coordinated multiple operations closely in the past, the presence of American citizens among hostages taken by Hamas in mid-October makes the deployment of American combat units far from implausible. 

The report follows a massive escalation of the American military presence around Israel and deployment of personnel on the ground for advisory roles, with the United States having a long history of deploying personnel under the guise of providing advisors who go on the participate heavily in combat operations. 

The early years of the Vietnam War remain the best known precedent, with tens of thousands of Americans officially serving as advisors to South Vietnamese forces in the early 1960s and participating very heavily in the war effort particularly for offensives into North Vietnam. This preceded congressional approval for escalation of the war effort with even larger personnel commitments after the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

American special forces’ considerable experience with counterinsurgency and urban warfare is expected to be highly valued in the theatre, although there have been growing indications that Hamas forces have received very high levels of training from either Iran or the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. 

Hezbollah in particular has seen its forces including special operations units deployed extensively for urban combat, with special units having received advanced North Korean training. 

Training levels and a greater deal of popular support among Gaza’s population are expected to make Hamas a more difficult adversary to tackle, with prior militias engaged by U.S. forces having had no comparable state sponsorship or support to that provided by Iran to the Palestinian group. 

A growing number of reports have indicated that Israeli forces have struggled to respond to Hamas’ successful offensives into their territory, and while bombarding the Gaza Strip and cutting off water and electricity to its 2 million residents a military solution to neutralise Hamas itself has reportedly remained elusive. 

Although the United States is expected to intervene more heavily should the war escalate to involve Hezbollah or Iran more directly, the extent to which American forces will participate in operations against Hamas in Gaza over the coming months remains highly uncertain.