A small group of U.S. special operations forces is working with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in response to the Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
Also, the U.S. sent a team of hostage rescue experts to advise the Israeli military on a potential rescue of the 150 hostages, according to a report.
Austin said Tuesday that a small group of U.S. special ops forces — a "liaison cell" — is working with the Israeli special ops forces to help with "planning and intelligence" in their counteroperations against Hamas.
"We also have the ability to rapidly deploy other resources into the region," Austin said to reporters traveling with him to a Ukraine contact group meeting in Brussels.
Before President Joe Biden's White House speech on Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNN that the U.S. was offering Israel "additional U.S. advice and counsel."
"We have a lot of hostage expertise here in the United States and we're offering some of that expertise to Israel should they desire it and should they find that appropriate," Kirby told CNN.
The Messenger reported Wednesday that special ops teams in a European country not far from Israel have been placed on alert, according to two senior US military officials.
The sources added that the special ops members were "door-kickers" with the ability to go into enemy territory to rescue hostages. However, the report added that there were no current plans to dispatch such teams on the ground in Israel.
Advisers within the U.S. intelligence community were sent to aid an American special ops team assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Israel, the report said.
During his Tuesday speech, Biden said Americans were among the hostages taken top Gaza by Hamas terrorists.
Hamas has threatened to kill one prisoner for every Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip. Retaliatory strikes have killed more than 1,000 people in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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