Newsman: The United States launched military airstrike in eastern Syria along the border with Iraq on Thursday night. The Department of Defense said the strikes are a response to recent rocket attacks against Americans in Iraq, including one in which a civilian contractor working with American forces was killed and several U.S. service members were injured. Officials believe the Feb. 15 attack in Erbil, Iraq, was conducted by Shia militants. President Joe Biden delivered the message to US allies and rivals alike that ‘America is Back.’ Biden at the Munich Security Conference Friday morning reaffirmed the US position of global leadership, and “guaranteed” and that “an attack on one is an attack on all,”
“At President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement issued Thursday night. This attack was targeted structures in the eastern Syrian town of Al Bukamal that belong to Iranian-backed militias in retaliation for a recent rocket strike in Erbil in northern Iraq that left several Americans injured, according to the Pentagon.
“This proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures, including consultation with Coalition partners,” said Kirby. “The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”
The two Iranian-backed militias have launched rocket attacks in the past against American facilities in Iraq, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, according to a U.S. official. The airstrike was in retaliation for a Feb. 15 rocket attack against a U.S. base in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil that killed a coalition contractor and left several American contractors and a U.S. military service member wounded.
Another official described the airstrike as targeting a location through which both groups engaged in smuggling into Iraq.
“These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel,” Kirby continued. “Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kait’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kait’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS).”
“We’re confident in the target we went after. We know what we hit. We’re confident that target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters while returning to Washington, D.C., from a trip to California.
Austin said he had recommended the airstrike to Biden and added that the U.S. had encouraged the Iraqi government “to investigate and develop intelligence and that was very helpful to us in refining the target.”
He said the administration’s approach about how to respond to the rocket attack in Erbil had been “very deliberate” to ensure “connectivity” of the militia to the attack and that “we had the right targets.”
