The leader of a Christian humanitarian organization was wounded Thursday while helping refugees in Mosul, Iraq.
David Eubank, 56, of the Free Burma Rangers was shot through the left forearm and took shrapnel in the leg after he and an Iraqi Army officer were ambushed by ISIS.
Eubank, 56, has family connections in Amite County, and his columns appear frequently in the Enterprise-Journal. Though based in Burma, also known as Myanmar, the Free Burma Rangers also operate in other conflict zones such as Sudan, Iraq and Syria. Their mission is to provide “help, hope and love” — including food, supplies and emergency medical care — to people in need.
Eubank and two fellow volunteers were with an Iraqi Army unit when they were ambushed by ISIS on Thursday.
“We are following Lt. Hussein and staying in back of the unit,” Eubank wrote in a report of the incident. “We are here to give medical care for the wounded civilians and Iraqi Army.”
Suddenly ISIS soldiers attacked from the rear and the side as Eubank was sitting with Hussein.
“They shot at us from 7 meters away and one ISIS was smiling, one was shouting, the other had a look of hard hate as the three charged shooting their AKs at us point-blank,” Eubank wrote.
“Hussein was shot four times — twice in the chest and once in the hip and arm — and they shot me once in the arm. ...
“Hussein was screaming for me to help but it was only me and him in the street. Others had retreated when shooting started. ... I yelled for help as I dragged Hussein back down the street to where his troops had retreated into a building.”
Two fellow volunteers ran out to help despite continued fire from ISIS as Eubank treated Hussein’s wounds. They called for a vehicle which evacuated Hussein.
Eubank downplayed his own injuries.
“I have a very small through-wound in my forearm and small fragments in my leg and it is cleaned and bandaged and I will stay with the men. I am OK in every way and thank Jesus,” he wrote.
He asked his supporters to pray for Hussein’s recovery. Eubank said he will keep on with his work in Mosul.
“We continue in Jesus’ name and love. We will stay in the back and out of the fight but keep moving with, praying and helping those in need in Jesus’ name,” he wrote.
Eubank’s wife Karen, who has also served helping refugees on front lines in Iraq and Burma, is currently in Burma with their three children. In a report posted on the Free Burma Rangers’ Facebook page, she wrote, “I feel very grateful for God’s protection of all our team as He has provided it to this day and am looking forward to getting back where we can put our hands and hearts to action helping as much as we can.
“I honestly feel that the best way, even the ‘safest way’ that God has set for us these many years, is to continue consistently in the unique way he has opened for us of ‘frontline ministry.’ We pray to steward this mission well, with prayerful good judgment, teamwork, and to walk in grace, mercy, faithfulness and gratitude for each other and God’s abundant life!”
The Eubanks were serving as missionaries in Thailand in the 1990s when the Burma Army launched attacks against the country’s own ethnic tribespeople, who fled into Thailand. Eubank, a former Army Ranger and Green Beret, sprang into action taking medical supplies into Burma.
In 1997 he founded the Free Burma Rangers, which trains and equips teams to help internally displaced peoples in Burma. The Rangers were later asked to help with front-line ministry in Sudan, Iraq and Syria.
Recently Eubank’s Yazidi translator, Shaheen, was wounded while rescuing a girl under fire from ISIS, as Eubank wrote about in Sunday’s Enterprise-Journal. Shaheen later died.
