US launches airstrikes in Syria, kills Kataeb Hizbollah militant
Strikes a retaliation for a rocket atack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a US service member and other coalition troops: Pentagon
A US airstrike in Syria targeted facilities belonging to a powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi armed group, killing one fighter and wounding several others, an Iraqi militia official said on Friday, signalling the first military action undertaken by US President Joe Biden.
The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket atack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a US service member and other coalition troops.
The Iraqi militia official said that the strikes against the Kataeb Hizbollah, or Hizbollah Brigades, hit an area along the border between the Syrian site of Boukamal facing Qaim on the Iraqi side.
He spoke on condition of anonymity. Syria war monitoring groups said the strikes hit trucks moving weapons to a base for Iranianbacked militias in Boukamal.
“I’m confident in the target that we went ater, we know what we hit,” Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters flying with him from California to Washington, shortly ater the airstrikes which were carried out on Thursday evening Eastern Standard Time.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the war in Syria, said the strikes targeted a shipment of weapons that were being taken by trucks entering Syrian territories from Iraq.
The group said 22 fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries that includes Kataeb Hizbollah, were killed. The report could not be independently verified. In a statement, the group confirmed one of its fighters was killed and called the US strike a crime.
Defence Secretary Austin said he was “confident” the US had hit back at the “the same Shia militants that conducted the strikes,” referring to a Feb.15 rocket atack in northern Iraq that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a US service member and other coalition personnel.
Austin said he had recommended the action to Biden.
“We said a number of times that we will respond on our timeline,” Austin said.
“We wanted to be sure of the connectivity and we wanted to be sure that we had the right targets.” Earlier, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US action was a “proportionate military response” taken together with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners.
“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel,” Kirby said.
Kirby said the US airstrikes “destroyed multiple facilities at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups,” including Kataeb Hizbollah and Kataeb Sayyid Al Shuhada.
Further details were not immediately available. Mary Ellen O’connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, criticised the US atack as a violation of international law.
“The United Nations Charter makes absolutely clear that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed atack on the defending state for which the target state is responsible,” she said. “None of those elements is met in the
Syria strike.” Syria condemned the US strike calling it “a cowardly and systematic American aggression,” warning that the atack will lead to consequences.
“This aggression is a negative indication of the policies of the new American administration, which is supposed to adhere to international legitimacy, not to the law of the jungle,” a statement by Syria’s foreign ministry said.
Biden administration officials condemned the Feb.15 rocket atack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.
Officials have noted that in the past, Iranianbacked Shiite militia groups have been responsible for numerous rocket atacks that targeted US personnel or facilities in Iraq.
Kirby had said on Tuesday that Iraq is in charge of investigating the Feb.15 atack.
He added that US officials were not then able to give a “certain atribution as to who was behind these atacks.”