Ex-U.S. Commando Recalls Harrowing Rescue of ISIS Massacre Survivors: 'God Opened a Way' to Save Girl, 2 Others
This former U.S. commando has seen the horrors of war many times up close as he and his men continue to pursue their Christian mission of providing assistance to the victims of war in Iraq.
Documenting his group's latest rescue mission on Instagram, David Eubank recalled in vivid details an incident in Iraq where he witnessed God's intervention that allowed him and a group of Iraqi soldiers to rescue an Iraqi girl and two other survivors of a massacre perpetrated by Islamic State (ISIS) militants. Eubank heads the Free Burma Rangers, a Christian humanitarian organization helping Iraqi civilians flee from ISIS-held areas.
"ISIS fire was intense as we approached the huddled group of three survivors," Eubank wrote in an Instagram post, CBN News reported.
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He said it happened on June 1 when he and his Free Burma Rangers received a call for help from an Iraqi unit that was fighting ISIS on the frontlines west of Mosul, Iraq.
They immediately sprang into action. "We got there and a guy came crying, crying, he said, 'My daughter was shot in front of me, her head was blown off,'" Eubank said.
He said what he saw was horrific: At least 50 bodies on the ground, people trying to flee who were massacred by ISIS militants.
He then saw something moved among the dead. There were survivors.
They tried to approach but a hail of ISIS gunfire stopped them in their tracks.
He and his team were just 150 yards away from the survivors but could not come closer because of the ISIS gunfire.
He and his team then prayed to God to open a way for them to rescue the survivors.
He called for U.S. military assistance. The Americans quickly responded by dropping smoke bombs, obscuring the view of the ISIS gunmen with smoke that enabled Eubank and his team to rescue the survivors, one of whom was a little girl who came out from under her dead mother's hijab.
"God opened a way" to allow them to save lives, Eubank said.
A CNN team embedded with the Iraqi forces also came up with an intensive report on the battlefield in Iraq, describing the horrors of the war in excruciating details.
Its report conveyed images that resembled scenes in a war movie:
"A Humvee screams into the field clinic a few kilometers from western Mosul's current front line. A teenage girl is carried out, listless. An elderly man is in complete shock, unable to utter a word, and is helped towards a bed. A woman struggling to breathe is quickly given oxygen," the report said.
The report also provided direct translated quotes from the survivors. Ten-year-old year old Mariam Salim is quoted as saying, "My parents are under the rubble, sister is dead. I saw her ... They are gone, they are gone. My mother, father, sister, brother."
