March
24, 2023
An
American contractor was killed and five U.S. troops and a second U.S.
contractor were wounded when a suspected Iranian-linked drone attacked a
coalition military base in northeast Syria late Thursday, the Pentagon said in
a statement.
The
Pentagon said it launched retaliatory airstrikes on facilities used by groups
affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
"As
President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend
our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing. No
group will strike our troops with impunity," U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin said in a separate statement. He said the airstrikes were a response to
Thursday's attack as well as a series of recent attacks that have targeted
coalition forces in Syria.
There
was no immediate reaction from Iran's government. Iran’s diplomatic mission to
the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitoring group, said
the U.S. airstrikes killed eight pro-Iranian fighters in Syria.
Austin
said in his statement that two of the wounded U.S. service members were treated
at the base. The three additional service members and the American contractor
were evacuated to medical facilities in neighboring Iraq.
There
are about 900 U.S. troops and an unknown number of American military contractors
in Syria, a presence that is maintained to apply pressure to the remnants of
the Islamic State militant group and to try to limit Iran's influence in Syria.
It is not the first time President Joe Biden has authorized strikes against
pro-Iranian fighters in Syria.
Biden's
first military action as president, in late February 2021, was to order
airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria in response to attacks on
U.S. and coalition military personnel in Iraq. Iranian proxy groups have been
launching attacks on U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq for several years, but the
pace escalated after an American drone strike in January 2020 killed Maj. Gen.
Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian commander, while he was in Baghdad visiting with
senior Iraqi security officials.
The
U.S. Congress is considering repealing bills from 1991 and 2002 that allowed
for the use of force against Iraq's government during the Iraq War, the 20th
anniversary of which was marked Monday. This bill is known as the authorization
of military force, or AUMF. Some lawmakers also want to repeal or update a
separate 2001 AUMF that sprung from President George W. Bush's "global war
on terror" and the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11. That 2001
authorization has been stretched to allow the U.S. to target militant groups in
Syria, Pakistan, the Philippines and beyond.
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