The moment a former US Special Forces operator-turned aid worker rescues a young girl from the line of fire in Mosul has been caught on video.

David Eubank, 56, pulled off the daring rescue in the embattled northern Iraq city, where allied forces have been on a grinding offensive to re-take the city from ISIS for the past eight months.

Eubank says he came across a group of civilians who had been gunned down by an ISIS sniper, and saw a toddler and a girl of five moving among the bodies.

A video shows him running to save the girl as two other members of the self-styled aid group - the Free Burma Rangers - provide covering fire with machine guns.

Wearing a helmet and ballistic vest, David Eubank (right) sprints from cover to attempt a rescue

Eubank's colleagues lay down cover fire as the 56-year-old picks his way over bodies to the stranded young girl they've spotted among the dead

Wearing a helmet and ballistic vest, Eubank charged into the kill zone and retrieved the young girl, who had her hair tied with pink ribbons

'I thought, "If I die doing this, my wife and kids would understand",' Eubank told the Los Angeles Times.

Wearing a helmet and ballistic vest, Eubank charged into the kill zone and retrieved the young girl, who had her hair tied with pink ribbons.

Eubank returned to find the toddler, but was unsuccessful. Another injured man the team tried to save did not survive.

Eubank's daughter Sahale, 16, is pictured holding the little girl her father saved in Mosul

Eubank is pictured with the little girl after he saved her from ISIS in Mosul, Iraq

FREE BURMA RANGERS Free Burma Rangers (FBR) is a Christian humanitarian group formed in 1997 by former David Eubank. FBR has provided emergency relief in ethnic minority areas in Myanmar, which has been plagued by civil war for more than 60 years. Since January 2016, FBR has traveled to Iraq for relief and reporting trips. Advertisement

Eubank, who founded the Christian humanitarian group Free Burma Rangers after retiring from the US Army, led the group along with his wife Karen and their three children ages 11 to 16, into Mosul after hearing horror stories of ISIS's treatment of civilians.

'I believe God sent me here, and I don't think about security… but I always ask myself if I'm doing it out of pride,' he told the Times.

Not long after the rescue, Eubank, who grew up in Texas, and his family returned to the US, but he has said he is already thinking of another mission to Iraq.

At the time of the rescue of the little girl, Eubank was embedded with Iraqi troops.

His wife was home-schooling their children Sahale, 16, Suuzane, 14, and Peter, 11, at a room above the Iraqi 9th Division’s medical clinic, just a mile from the front line.

Eubank was in Iraq with his wife and their children Sahale, 16, Suuzane, 14, and Peter, 11 (pictured)