U.S. strikes in Syria and Iraq kill dozens of militants
U.S. strikes against Iranlinked militants in Iraq and Syria overnight killed dozens of fighters and several civilians, according to the Iraqi government, militia groups and a local monitoring network on Saturday, in the Biden administration’s first round of retaliatory action for an attack that killed three U.S. forces in Jordan last week.
The airstrikes were a show of force but appeared to do little direct damage to Iranian assets in the region, instead largely targeting Tehran’s network of proxy forces.
“It looks like a very significant action by the Biden administration, but on the other hand I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near sufficient to deter these groups,” said Charles Lister, director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria program. “These militias have been engaged in this campaign for more than 20 years, they are in a long-term struggle. They are ultimately engaged in an attritional campaign against the U.S.”
The overnight strikes on 85 targets, carried out using B-1 bombers flown from the United States, were part of what U.S. officials say would be a multiday campaign at regional targets linked to Iran. President Biden has said that further military action in response to the U.S. troop deaths “will continue at times and places of our choosing.”
U.S. officials have described the operation as a carefully calibrated military response aimed at deterring further attacks on U.S. interests in the region while avoiding ramping up the cycle of regional conflict.
Syria and Iraq warned that the strikes could do just that.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani described the strikes as another American “strategic mistake” alongside its support of Israel during its war on Hamas. They contribute to “tension and instability” in the region, he said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.based monitoring network, said 18 militants were killed in strikes at 26 Iranlinked sites in Syria. The Washington Post could not independently verify the figures.
Iraq, a strategic ally of the United States, said it had summoned David Burger, the U.S. charge
d’affaires in Baghdad, to hand him a letter of protest following the raids that killed at least 16 Iraqis and injured 25 in the Akashat and al-Qaim areas of the western province of Anbar.
An Iraqi government spokesman described the American airstrikes as “blatant aggression.”
“This aggressive strike places the security in Iraq and the region on the edge of the abyss, conflicting with efforts to establish the required stability,” spokesman Basim al-Awadi said. He said the government
rejected the use of Iraqi soil as a “battleground for settling scores.”
While the Iraqi government said that the 16 deaths included an unspecified number of civilians, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which includes an array of militia factions including some linked to Iran, attributed the same number of casualties – 16 deaths and 25 injuries – to its fighters. It released a list of their names.
Separately, an Iraqi official in Anbar province,
who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject, said at least two civilians were killed near al-Qaim on the Syrian border, where weapons depots were targeted, putting the potential number of deaths in the country at 18. Shiekh Hani Al-Awad, a tribal leader from the area, also confirmed the death of two civilians.
Iraqi officials did not respond to queries on the discrepancies.
The PMF is made up of largely Shiite militias that rallied to fight Islamic State militants in 2014 after they overran swaths of Iraq and Syria. The United States also sent troops to support ground and air operations against the Islamic State, and still has a few thousand troops stationed in Iraq and Syria, with a stated mission of preventing the group’s resurgence.
But while they were briefly united in a shared goal, the more hard-line Iran-backed proxies soon turned their efforts toward pushing U.S. forces from the region.
The PMF has since been absorbed by Iraq’s formal security forces, while proIran militias coalesced under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group. The Islamic Resistance of Iraq claimed responsibility for the lethal drone attack against U.S. troops in Jordan on Jan 28.
The group also said on Saturday that it had launched two new attacks on U.S. troop positions in response to the airstrikes, including one at the Harir air base in northern Iraq and a second on a base in Kharab al-Jeer in northeastern Syria.
A spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military coalition