IRANIAN-BACKED MILITIA SITES HIT

The U.S. launched airstrikes in Syria, targeting facilities near the Iraqi border used by Iranianbacked militia groups.

WASHINGTON» The United States on Thursday carried out an airstrike in eastern Syria against structures belonging to what the Pentagon said were Iran-backed militias responsible for recent attacks against U.S. and allied personnel in Iraq.

President Joe Biden authorized the strikes in response to the rocket attacks in Iraq and to continuing threats to U.S. and coalition personnel, said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, who spoke with reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III in California.

A rocket attack on Feb. 15 on the airport in Irbil, in northern Iraq, killed a Filipino contractor with the U.S.-led military coalition and wounded six others, including a Louisiana National Guard soldier and four American contractors.

U.S. officials said the Thursday strikes were a relatively small, carefully calibrated military response: seven 500-pound bombs dropped on a small cluster of buildings at an unofficial crossing at the Syria-Iraq border used to smuggle across weapons and fighters.

The strikes were just over the border in Syria to avoid diplomatic blowback to the Iraqi government. The Pentagon offered up several larger groups of targets, but Biden approved a less-aggressive option, U.S. officials said.

The American airstrikes Thursday “specifically destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militia troops, including Kataib

Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada,” Kirby said.

“This proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners,” Kirby said. “The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel.”

Kirby said the American retaliation was meant to punish the perpetrators of the rocket attack but not to escalate hostilities with Iran, with which the Biden administration has sought to renew talks on a nuclear deal that President Donald Trump had shelved.

“We have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to deescalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq,” Kirby said.

The attack on the Irbil airport was claimed by a little-known group called Awliya al Dam, or Guardian of the Blood, brigades. The group also claimed responsibility for two bombings against U.S. contractor convoys in August.

Little is known about the group, including whether it is backed by Iran or related to the organizations that used the facilities the American airstrikes targeted Thursday. Some U.S. officials contend that the group is merely a front for one of the better-known Shia militias.

Michael P. Mulroy, a former top Middle East policy official at the Pentagon, said the limited strikes appeared intended to signal that Iran’s use of militias as proxies would not allow them to avoid responsibility for attacking Americans.

“It was smart to strike in Syria and avoid the blowback in Iraq.”