Photo: Alamy
Three U.S. troops have been killed, and at least 25 have been wounded following a drone-strike attack near an outpost in northeast Jordan, U.S. Central Command has confirmed.
These attacks mark the first fatalities of American service members following the months of assault from Iranian-backed militias amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
CENTCOM confirmed the attacks on Sunday, claiming that the fatalities came from a “one-way attack UAS that impacted at a base in northeast Jordan.”
According to CENTCOM, “the identities of the service members will be withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified” as a “matter of respect for the families.”
In an official statement from the White House, Joe Biden claimed that this attack “was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”
Biden promised to “carry on” the late troops’ “commitment to fight terrorism,” promising to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and manner of our choosing.”
This terrorist attack is a major intensification of the war in the Middle East, where war initially began in Gaza following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7, which subsequently killed 1,200 people.
After the war on Hamas first began, U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have suffered drone and missile strikes on their bases more than 150 times, according to Reuters.
In recent months, American forces have struck targets throughout Iraq, Syria, and Yemen in response to these attacks, along with the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels’ threats to commercial shipping in the Red Sea.