Saturday’s American casualty was the third this past week in the fight against the Islamic State. On Wednesday, two American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan during a raid on ISIS fighters. Pentagon officials said they might have been struck by friendly fire.
The Defense Department on Friday identified the soldiers, both of them Army Rangers, as Sgt. Joshua Rodgers, 22, and Sgt. Cameron Thomas, 23, deployed from Fort Benning, Ga. A third soldier was wounded in the operation, which targeted the “emir” of Islamic State militants in Afghanistan, Defense Department officials said.
The Mosul death is the second American military fatality since the fight to regain the city began last year. In October, a Navy chief petty officer, Jason C. Finan, 34, of Anaheim, Calif., was killed as a roadside bomb exploded north of the city.
