Pentagon officials said the strikes were in retaliation for recent attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq, including a rocket attack in northern Iraq on Feb. 15 that killed a civilian contractor and injured a service member. American and other coalition troops.
John Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said Friday that two Air Force F-15E aircraft fired seven missiles, completely destroying nine facilities and severely damaging two other facilities, causing the two to be “functionally destroyed.” “. He said the facilities, at “border checkpoints” on the border, had been used by militia groups that the United States holds responsible for several recent attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq.
Kirby said the facilities affected by the attack were near Boukamal, on the Syrian side of the Iraqi border, along the Euphrates River.
“This location is known to facilitate the activity of the militia group aligned in Iran,” he said. He added that the United States has preliminary information about the victims at the scene of the attack, but declined to disclose any details pending the completion of a broader assessment of the damage caused. He described the site as a “compound” that had previously been used by the Islamic State group when it maintained control of the area.
An Iraqi militia official told The Associated Press that strikes against Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah brigades, hit an area along the border between the Syrian site of Boukamal, in front of Qaim on the Iraqi side. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak of the attack. Syrian war surveillance groups said the strikes affected trucks carrying weapons to an Iranian-backed militia base in Boukamal.
“I’m sure of the goal we pursued, we know what we achieved,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters flying with him from California to Washington shortly after the airstrikes that took place Thursday in evening, standard Eastern time.
The Biden administration in its early weeks has stressed its intention to focus more on the challenges posed by China, even if threats from the Middle East persist. Biden’s decision to attack Syria did not appear to indicate an intention to expand U.S. military involvement in the region, but rather to demonstrate a willingness to defend U.S. troops in Iraq and send a message to the United States. Iran.
In the past, the United States has targeted Syrian Kataeb Hezbollah facilities, which it has blamed on numerous attacks on U.S. personnel and interests in Iraq. The Iraqi Kataeb is separate from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that monitors the war in Syria, said the strikes were aimed at a shipment of weapons that were taking trucks entering Syrian territory from the ‘Iraq. The group said 22 fighters from the People’s Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries that includes Kataeb Hezbollah, were killed. The report could not be independently verified.
In a statement, the group confirmed that one of its fighters was killed and said it reserved the right to retaliate, without detailing it. Kataeb Hezbollah, like other factions backed by Iran, keeps fighters in Syria to fight the Islamic State group and help the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country’s civil war.
Defense Secretary Austin said he was “sure” the U.S. had attacked the “same Shiite militants who carried out the strikes,” in reference to a Feb. 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq. which killed a civilian contractor and injured a member of the U.S. service and coalition personnel.
Austin said he had recommended the action to President Biden.
“We’ve said several times that we will respond to our timeline,” Austin said. “We wanted to be sure of connectivity and we wanted to be sure we had the right goals.”
Earlier, Kirby said the U.S. action was a “proportional military response” taken along with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners.
“The operation sends an unequivocal message: President Biden will act to protect U.S. and coalition personnel,” Kirby said.
Kirby said U.S. airstrikes “destroyed several facilities at a border checkpoint used by several Iran-backed militant groups,” including Kataeb Hezbollah and Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada.
No further details were obtained immediately.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, criticized the U.S. attack as a violation of international law.
“The Charter of the United Nations makes it absolutely clear that the use of military force in the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed attack on the defending state for which the target state is responsible.” he said. “None of these elements are being met in the Syrian strike.”
Syria condemned the American strike, calling it a “cowardly and systematic American aggression”, warning that the attack would have consequences.
“This aggression is a negative indication of the policies of the new US administration, which are supposed to adhere to international legitimacy, not the law of the jungle,” a statement from Syria’s foreign ministry said.
Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil, in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, but recently this week officials indicated that they had not determined with certainty who carried it out.
Kirby had said Tuesday that Iraq is in charge of investigating the Feb. 15 attack. He added that US officials could not give a “certain attribution of who was behind these attacks.”
A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself Saraya Alwiya al-Dam, an Arab from the Guardians of Blood Brigade, claimed responsibility for the February 15 attack. A week later, a rocket attack in the green area of Baghdad appeared as a target against the U.S. embassy grounds, but no one was injured.
This week Iran said it has no ties to the Blood Guard Brigade. Iran-backed groups have erupted significantly since the U.S.-led strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad more than a year ago. Both were key to controlling and controlling a wide range of Iran-backed groups operating in Iraq.
Since his death, militias have become increasingly undisciplined. Some analysts argue that armed groups have split as a tactic to claim attacks with different names to mask their involvement.
U.S. forces have been significantly reduced in Iraq to 2,500 troops and are no longer involved in combat missions with Iraqi forces in ongoing operations against the Islamic State group.
Baldor and Burns reported from Washington, DC
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