US forces have been conducting “precision airstrikes” in eastern Syria after a drone strike that killed one American and wounded six others, the Pentagon said Thursday night.
The drone strike took place around 1:38 p.m. (10:38 GMT) Thursday against a maintenance facility at a base near Hasakah in northeastern Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement.
US intelligence services consider the drone to be of “Iranian origin,” the Pentagon added.
The deceased is an American contractor and the injured are five servicemen and another contractor who are also Americans, according to the same source.
“I have authorized the forces of United States Central Command to conduct precision airstrikes in eastern Syria tonight against facilities used by groups affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the statement said. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is quoted in the statement.
Revolutionary Guards
“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.
Several hundred American soldiers are in Syria as part of a coalition fighting what remains of the Islamic State (IS) group. 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.
Two of the soldiers injured Thursday were treated at the scene of the attack, while the other three soldiers and a US contractor were medically evacuated to Iraq, the Pentagon 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,” Austin said.
Joe Biden is in Canada to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and to address the Canadian Parliament on Friday.
In August 2022, the US President ordered similar retaliatory strikes in Syria’s oil-rich Deir Ezzor province after a coalition outpost was attacked by several drones, leaving no casualties.
The attack came on the day Iranian state media 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.”
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.