14 pro-Iran fighters killed in US air strikes in Syria
BEIRUT: Fourteen pro-Iran fighters were killed in US air strikes on Syria in response to a drone attack that killed an American and wounded five others, a war monitor said on Friday. A US contractor and five US service personnel were wounded when a kamikaze drone of Iranian origin struck a base of the US-led coalition near Hasakeh in northeastern Syria.
In response to today's attack, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Thursday that he had ordered precision air strikes in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as a number of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria, which have been linked to the IRGC, as well as a number of other groups affiliated with the IRGC.
Iran-backed militias have a heavy presence across Syria, especially around the border with Iraq and south and west of the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor province, where the latest US strikes took place.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor with a wide network of sources on the ground, said 14 people had been killed by US strikes, including nine Syrians.
The Observatory's head Rami Abdel Rahman said that the US strikes targeted a weapons depot in Deir Ezzor city, killing six pro-Iran fighters, and two other fighters were killed by strikes targeting the desert of Al-Mayadeen and six others near Albu Kamal.
On Friday morning, Iran-backed groups stationed near the city of Al-Mayadeen fired three missiles near a US base, said Abdel Rahman.
He said two missiles struck in Syria's largest oil field, Al-Omar, which houses the US base, without causing damage, while the third landed on a civilian house nearby.
The United States deploys about 900 troops in bases and posts over northeastern Syria as part of the international coalition fighting remnants of the Islamic State group. American troops also support the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF the Kurds' de facto army in the area, which led the battle that dislodged IS from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019.
The US military has been targeted in a number of attacks by militia groups.
Two of the U.S. service members wounded on Thursday were treated on site, while three other troops and one US contractor were medically evacuated to Iraq, the Pentagon said.
General Michael Kurilla, commander of US Central Command, said that we will always take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing.
When the strikes were announced, Biden had already travelled to Canada, where he will meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In January, the US military said three one-way attack drones were launched against the coalition garrison at Al-Tanf in Syria, with one breaching its air defences and wounding two allied Syrian fighters.
The Observatory said it was likely that Iran-backed militants had carried out the attack.
In August, Biden ordered similar retaliatory strikes in Deir Ezzor province after several drones targeted a coalition outpost, without any casualties.
It came on the same day that Iranian state media announced a Revolutionary Guard general had been killed days earlier in a mission in Syria by a military adviser. A key ally of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said it had deployed its forces in Syria at the invitation of Damascus and only as advisers.