Pentagon: US soldier killed in ‘combat’

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Thursday that “it was absolutely combat” that led to the death of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan this week.  

“He was, you can call it, it was absolutely combat,” Cook said at a Pentagon briefing. 

“He was engaged in a — not just in a combat situation. He was, as we now understand it, there was fire coming at that time. This was someone who was absolutely fighting on behalf of the safety and security of the American people and defending this country,” he said. 

The remark came after repeated questions from the press this week over whether Staff Sgt. Adam S. Thomas was killed in combat. Thomas died Tuesday morning in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Defense officials have often side-stepped the question of whether a soldier was killed in combat since President Obama formally ended the U.S.’s combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014. 

Cook earlier in the week had refrained from saying Thomas was killed in combat, instead using several other descriptions, including “tragic situation,” “combat situation” and “dangerous situation.” 

“And you can call it — this was someone who was in harm’s way, a combat situation to be sure, but I think you have to draw a distinction between our mission in Afghanistan today and what we were doing, say, even five or 10 years ago,” Cook said Tuesday.  

The U.S. has 9,800 troops in Afghanistan conducting two missions: a counterterrorism mission to root out al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and a train, advise and assist mission to help Afghan forces fight the Taliban, an insurgent group who gave safe haven to al Qaeda as it planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the U.S. 

Thomas was part of the counterterrorism mission. 

Cook said after the briefing that Thomas was on a patrol with Afghan forces when they came under fire from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). After exiting the vehicle they were in, Thomas encountered an improvised explosive device, or bomb. 

“Staff Sergeant Thomas was the first American servicemember killed in a counter-ISIL operation in Afghanistan,” Cook said, using another acronym for ISIS.

Thomas, 31, of Tacoma Park, Md., was assigned to Company B, 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Carson, Colo.