WASHINGTON — A U.S. contractor was killed and another and five U.S. service members were injured when a self-destructing drone struck a maintenance facility at a coalition base in northeastern Syria. on Thursday, the Pentagon said in a statement.
US intelligence analysts concluded that the drone was of “Iranian origin”, according to a Pentagon statement, which said the attack took place near Hasaka at 13:38 local time.
In response, at President Biden’s direction, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said he had ordered air strikes on facilities in eastern Syria by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. , or IRGC, use.
“The strikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a recent series of attacks on coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC,” Austin said. know in a statement released late Thursday.
“These precision attacks are intended to protect and protect US personnel,” the statement said. “The United States has taken deliberate and deliberate action to limit the risk of escalation and minimize casualties.”
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A senior US military official said the US attacked an weapons depot, a control building and an intelligence gathering site.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that monitors the conflict through contacts in Syria, US air strikes have killed eight pro-Iranian fighters in eastern Syria.
Rami Abdurrahman, its director, said on Friday that the attacks targeted an arms depot in the city of Deir Ezzor, killing six militants and two more fighters were killed in strikes in Mayadeen desert and near the town of Bukamal. The account cannot be independently verified.
“As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to protect our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” Austin said. “No group will attack our army with impunity.”
The attacks have the potential to inflame tensions with Iran, which Biden administration officials have called the biggest security threat in the Middle East.
General Michael E. Kurilla, head of the army’s Central Command, said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee earlier on Thursday: “The proxy forces are vast and well-resourced. Iran’s far-reaching spread has sown instability throughout the region and threatened our regional partners.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a powerful branch of the Iranian armed forces that operates in tandem with the military. It is tasked with guarding Iran’s borders, and its overseas branch, the Quds Force, conducts operations throughout the Middle East and beyond, and trains and armes militias. Shiite proxy militias operate in several countries. The United States has designated it a terrorist group.
Iran has built drones with increasingly sophisticated weapons capabilities in recent years. They are both selling them commercially to other countries, including Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, and pushing to transfer them to proxies.
Drones are part of a rapidly growing threat from Iran’s proxies in Syria, with militias dedicated to operating more sophisticated weapons against some sensitive targets. America’s best in attacks that evade American defenses.
Two of the wounded service members were treated on the spot, while three other service members and contractors were medically evacuated to coalition medical facilities in Iraq. The Pentagon did not identify the contractor who was killed, pending notification to the family, a senior military official said.
The US still has more than 900 troops and hundreds of other contractors in Syria, working with Kurdish fighters to ensure there is no resurgence of the Islamic State, ostensibly defeated as the a self-proclaimed caliphate in 2019, after five years of devastating devastation across Iraq and Syria.
Iran-backed militias have carried out dozens of attacks at or near bases where US troops are stationed in the past year alone. U.S. forces and partners with a coalition that includes the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces worked together to maintain pressure on Islamic State fighters and to ensure that the militants were defeated. detention will not return to the battlefield.
Kurdish forces in Syria conduct targeted attacks against Islamic State members. They also protect more than 10,000 imprisoned Islamic State fighters, while the Pentagon and US military provide air support, intelligence and reconnaissance.
With the Biden administration focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a potential future conflict with China, the military mission against Islamic State in Syria has become a thorny issue.
The mission only gained more attention when Iran-backed militias or Islamic State militants attacked US troops on a rotational basis for nine months at several bases in northeastern Syria, which General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited this month.
The US has repeatedly carried out air strikes in response. In June 2021, it attacked facilities used by two Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria that the Pentagon said carried out drone strikes against American personnel in Iraq. In December 2019, the US military hit five targets in Iraq and Syria controlled by an Iran-backed paramilitary group in retaliation for a missile attack that killed an American contractor.
John Yoon contributed reporting from Seoul.
