US soldiers and a combat vehicle during a military patrol in the countryside near Al-Malikiyé (Derik) in Hassaké province in northeastern Syria, October 27, 2020. DELIL SOULEIMAN / AFP
US forces conducted “precision airstrikes” in eastern Syria after a drone strike that killed one American and wounded six others, the United States announced on Thursday evening, March 23. The drone strike took place around 1:38 p.m. Thursday (11:38 a.m. Paris time) against a maintenance facility at a base near Hassakeh in northeastern Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement.
US intelligence services consider the drone to be of “Iranian origin,” the Pentagon added. The person who died is an American contractor and those injured are five soldiers and another also American contractor, according to the same source.
Two of the injured soldiers were treated at the scene of the attack while the other four were medically evacuated to Iraq, the Pentagon said.
“I have authorized United States Central Command forces to conduct precision airstrikes in eastern Syria tonight against facilities used by groups affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard Corps [iraniens] said US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, quoted in the statement.
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US soldiers are frequently targeted
“The airstrikes were carried out in response to today’s attack, as well as a series of recent attacks on coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard Corps,” he said. “As President Biden has made clear, we will take any action necessary to defend our fellow citizens and fight back whenever and wherever we choose,” he added.
Several hundred American soldiers are in Syria as part of a coalition fighting what remains of the Islamic State organization. They are frequently attacked by militias. US troops are supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army in the region that led the fight that pushed ISIS out of the last areas it controlled in Syria in 2019.
In August 2022, US President Joe Biden ordered similar retaliatory strikes in Syria’s oil-rich province of Deir ez-Zor after a coalition outpost was attacked by multiple drones without casualties. The attack came on the day an Iranian state media outlet announced the death of a Revolutionary Guard general who had been killed a few days earlier “while on a mission to Syria as a military adviser.”
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Iran says it has deployed its forces in Syria at the invitation of Damascus and only as an adviser. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is the ideological arm of the Iranian military and is described by Washington as a terrorist group.