U.S. troops in Syria are attacked after airstrikes on militias
U.S. troops in eastern
Syria came under rocket attack Monday, with no reported casualties, one day after U.S. Air Force planes carried out airstrikes near the Iraq-Syria border against what the Pentagon said were facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups to support drone strikes inside Iraq.
Iraq’s military condemned the U.S. airstrikes, and the militia groups called for revenge against the United States.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the militias were using the facilities to launch unmanned aerial vehicle attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. It was the second time the administration has taken military action in the region since Biden took over this year.
There was no indication that Sunday’s attacks were meant as the start of a wider, sustained U.S. air campaign in the border region. But a spokesman for the U.S. military mission based in Baghdad, Col. Wayne Marotto, wrote on Twitter on Monday that at 7:44 p.m. local time “U.S. forces in Syria were attacked by multiple rockets.” He said there were no injuries and that the damage was being assessed.
Marotto later tweeted that while under rocket attack, U.S. forces in Syria responded with artillery fire at the rocket-launching positions.
Kirby said the U.S. military targeted three operational and weapons storage facilities — two in
Syria and one in Iraq. In its release of videos of the strikes by Air Force F-15 and F-16 aircraft, the Pentagon described one target as a coordination center for the shipment and transfer of advanced conventional weapons.
Kirby said the airstrikes were “defensive,” saying they were launched in response to the attacks by militias.
“The United States took necessary, appropriate, and deliberate action designed to limit the risk of escalation — but also to send a clear and unambiguous deterrent message,” Kirby said.