now, this is an isis affiliate, if you will. these are people who identify themselves as isis adherence, isis fighters along the pakistan border. as i think general hertling can explain probably better than i, these kind of fighters identify themselves at different times with different loyalties. the fact that they say they re isis, it s still going to be the case that the u.s. doesn t want these type of unsurgents, these typical of terrorists going back and forth. the fokt that they re watching nangahar, that s why they ve had troops there and when a special operations soldier died in a gunfight, it s why you have them up there. it may well be that this remote area, you get to the point where operations on foot just aren t going to make it if the fighters
france. that cannot be excluded from the context of what happened today. ayman, thank you very much for that. now let s go to the pentagon. jim miklaszewski is there. i know you have been looking into the u.s. troop involvement, especially u.s. special ops. what have you found out about their presence there and who might have actually been in the hotel when all of this was going down? well, the latest announcement just recently out of the pentagon is that all 22 u.s. defense and military officials who were in the city of bamako at the time that those hostages were taken there at the hotel are all accounted for and there were no injuries. now, according to officials here, there were six americans inside the hotel who managed to evacuate safely. that s the only number of americans we know for sure about that were in the hotel. now, one special operations soldier, an american, was there at the hotel in the vicinity and
safely evacuate. not clear if there were any americans that were actually among the hostages. we ll still have to wait for that word. but initial reports that 26 special operations forces were involved in the hostage rescue effort turned out to be totally incorrect. the bottom line is that there were two special operations forces in the vicinity, apparently off duty, probably in civilian clothes and unarmed. one of those special operations forces helped those hotel guests evacuate the hotel. he was down on the main floor or just outside the lobby, ushering the people out. another special operations soldier is at the command center where mali forces, security forces, military police were putting together an assault to try to rescue the hostages and take down those gunmen. so, only two. they were not directly involved in the rescue operation itself.
assisting local security and local security police and military in evacuating the hotel, helping those guests who were not taken hostage leave the hotel, and that, we re told, includes six americans who were in the hotel but not taken hostage. now, according to the officials, that one soldier on the scene was assisting local authority. and then there is another special operations soldier at some kind of command center where the local police and military are still under way their operations are still under way to confront and rescue those hostages who were taken by the armed militants who stormed the hotel early this morning. so, at this point, even though there are 26 special operations forces in mali, semi-permanently they re there on training missions only two showed up in the vicinity and are assisting local
the american forces that have been deployed to iraq do not and will not have a combat mission. they will support iraqi forces on the ground. could you please explain how more raids fits with no combat troops? we have this capability. it is a great american strength. it doesn t represent us assuming a combat role. it represents a continuation of our advise and assist mission. you alluded twice to his actions. his actions and the actions of a fellow special operations soldier. could you provide us some of that detail?