Casualty count from attack rises United States

The Pentagon has disclosed that 34 US service members suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iran’s missile attack this month on an Iraqi air base, and although half have returned to work, the total belies US President Donald Trump’s initial claim that no Americans were harmed.

Eight of the injured arrived in the US yesterday from Germany, where they and nine others had been flown several days after the January 8 missile strike on Iraq’s Ain al-Asad air base.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said the eight would be treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Maryland, or at their home bases. The exact nature of their injuries was not disclosed.

Trump initially said he was told that no troops had been injured in the attack, which Iran carried out as retaliation for a US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iran’s most powerful general, Qassem Soleimani.

The military said symptoms of concussion or traumatic brain injury were not immediately reported after the attack, and in some cases only became known days later.

The question of American casualties took on added importance at the time of the attack, because the degree of damage was seen as influencing a US decision on whether to counterattack and risk a broader war with Iran.

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, can involve varying degrees of impairment of thinking, memory, vision, hearing and other functions.

Hoffman’s disclosure that 34 people had been diagnosed with TBI was the first official update of the number injured since the Pentagon announced the evacuation of the first 11.

No-one was killed in the attack, even though the US had no missile defence systems at the base. Hoffman said yesterday that deploying one or more Patriot anti-missile systems to Iraq was among the options now being considered by military commanders.