(PresidentialHill.com)- Thursday night, the US military carried out a series of air strikes against Iranian-backed groups in Syria after a drone attack on a coalition base killed one American and wounded six others, Reuters reported.
The drone attack took place in northeast Syria at the coalition base near Hasakah on Thursday. According to the Pentagon, the intelligence community assessed that the attack was carried out by an Iranian one-way attack drone.
The attack killed an American contractor and wounded another. Five US service members were also wounded.
Three of the service members and the contractor wounded in the attack were evacuated to Iraq to receive medical treatment. The other two wounded service members were treated at the base, the Pentagon said.
In a statement on Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the direction of President Biden, retaliatory strikes were carried out on facilities used by militias linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Austin said the airstrikes were in response to a series of recent attacks, including Thursday’s drone attack, adding that these groups will not be allowed to attack US troops “with impunity.”
The Iranian state outlet Press TV reported that local sources claimed that the US did not target pro-Iranian facilities but a rural development center and grain center were hit. A “military source in Syria” told Press TV that the pro-Iranian militias “will take reciprocal action.”
On Friday, ABC News reported that there were two subsequent attacks on US bases in northeast Syria.
Friday’s attacks were launched around the same time, with three drones targeting one coalition facility while five rockets were fired at a separate facility, wounding one US service member.
According to CENTCOM commander Gen. Erik Kurilla, US forces in Syria have come under attack around 78 times since 2021. And while US forces have been the target of drone attacks before, there are rarely fatalities, Reuters reported.
