A video has emerged of a former Special Forces operative running into intense gunfire from the ISIS terrorist group to rescue a little girl.
The hero in the footage is David Eubank, who formerly served 10 years in the U.S. military, according to the Los Angeles Times. Eubanks left the military in 1992, and has since joined the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), an aid group operating in war zones.
For the past eight months, FBR has been operating alongside the Mosul offensive against ISIS.
“This is one of the starkest and most desperate situations in the world. And with ISIS, it doesn’t feel melodramatic to say it’s evil,” said Hosanna Valentine, a longtime member of the organization.
Eubank first saw the little girl peeking out from below the hijab of her mother in a pile of corpses near a destroyed Pepsi factory. ISIS snipers have been shooting down civilians there as they fled the hellish conflict zone.
Eubank’s group coordinated with Iraqi soldiers in the U.S.-led coalition. Smoke canisters were dropped to protect the survivors in the pile of corpses as heavy fire from ISIS continued to rain down on them. Eubank and two other soldiers took cover behind an advancing tank and got within a few yards of the girl.
“Then the Americans dropped the biggest barrage, the most perfect wall of smoke I‘d ever seen,” Eubank told Los Angeles Times. “I thought, ’If I die doing this, my wife and kids would understand.'”
In the video, Eubank can be seen running onto the field as two soldiers step out with a barrage of gunfire to cover him. The girl, still wearing ribbons in her hair, appears uninjured, and was later led to safety, it was reported.
The journey of this hero was covered in a detailed account by Nabih Bulos, a special correspondent in the Middle East for the LA Times.
“I believe God sent me here, and I don’t think about security,” he told LA Times, “but I always ask myself if I’m doing it out of pride.”
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