U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have come under attack by Iranian-backed proxies 55 times in the last month.
The U.S. has responded to these attacks with three iterations of airstrikes targeting facilities in Syria and most recently a safe house near the cities of Abu Kamal and Mayadin.
“U.S. military forces conducted precision strikes today on facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups in response to continued attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement over the weekend.
The U.S. military also conducted airstrikes against a weapons storage facility and an ammunition storage area in Syria over the past two months.
“I think as you’ve seen, we’ve taken action,” Austin added. “We’ve hit weapons storage facilities, and it’s important to remember the facilities that we hit are now destroyed. These groups cannot go back to these facilities and take weapons out because they’re gone. So we feel that we are being very precise with our targeting and ensuring that we can inflict the most damage to these groups and their capabilities.”
From The Washington Examiner:
Since Oct. 17, U.S. forces in Iraq have been attacked 27 times, while U.S. troops in Syria have come under attack 28 times, deputy Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said on Tuesday. In those attacks, 59 U.S. troops have been injured, all of whom have since returned to duty, though nearly half were evaluated for traumatic head injuries. A majority of the injuries occurred during attacks on Oct. 17-18 that began this new chapter of heightened tension.
