US airstrikes killed eight pro-Iran fighters in jap Syria following a drone assault that killed one American contractor and wounded 5 US service personnel, a warfare monitor mentioned Friday.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mentioned Thursday that on the route of President Joe Biden, he had approved “precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
The IRGC is a wing of the Iranian army and is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the United States.
“The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against Coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC,” Austin added.
A Department of Defense assertion mentioned the US contractor had been killed and the others wounded “after a one-way unmanned aerial vehicle struck a maintenance facility on a Coalition base near Hasakeh in northeast Syria”.
Another US contractor was additionally injured within the UAV assault, the Pentagon mentioned, including that the US intelligence group “assess the UAV to be of Iranian origin”.
On Friday, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor with a large community of sources on the bottom within the war-torn nation, mentioned eight individuals had been killed by US strikes.
“US strikes targeted a weapons depots inside Deir Ezzor city, killing six pro-Iran fighters, and two other fighters were killed by strikes targeting the desert of Mayadine and near Albu Kamal,” he mentioned.
‘Always reply’
Hundreds of US troops are in Syria as a part of a coalition preventing in opposition to remnants of the Islamic State (IS) group and have incessantly been focused in assaults by militia teams.
The US troops help the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto military within the space, which led the battle that dislodged IS from the final scraps of their Syrian territory in 2019.
Two of the US service members wounded on Thursday had been handled on website, whereas the three different troops and one US contractor had been medically evacuated to Iraq, the Pentagon mentioned.
“We will always take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” mentioned General Michael Kurilla, commander of US Central Command.
When the strikes had been introduced, Biden had already travelled to Canada, the place he’s set to fulfill with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Last August, Biden ordered related retaliatory strikes within the oil-rich Syrian province of Deir Ezzor after a number of drones focused a coalition outpost, with out inflicting any casualties.
That assault got here the identical day that Iranian state media introduced a Revolutionary Guard normal had been killed days earlier whereas “on a mission in Syria as a military adviser”
Iran says it has deployed its forces in Syria on the invitation of Damascus and solely as advisers. —Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
