After a deadly drone attack, US hits Syria targets

• The US launched airstrikes against Iran-linked organizations in eastern Syria.
• Killing 14 pro-Iran fighters and injuring five US service members and a second contractor.
• The goal is to arm and train Syrian militiamen.

After a drone assault killed a US contractor, the US launched airstrikes against Iran-linked organizations in eastern Syria, according to the US defense chief.

According to a monitoring outfit, 14 pro-Iran fighters were slain.

The airstrikes, according to US sources, took place on Thursday night, hours after a drone attack that US intelligence claimed was “of Iranian origin.”

Previous attacks on US outposts in northeast Syria prompted airstrikes by the US in retaliation.

Following rocket assaults on US forces there in August of last year, the US targeted installations in eastern Syria that it claimed were connected to Iran’s most potent military force, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).

Thursday night’s air strikes were carried out on President Biden’s orders “in response to… [the drone] attack as well as a series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC”, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said.

He said they had targeted “facilities used by groups affiliated with… [the] IRGC”.

President Trump‘s special envoy to Syria, Joel Rayburn, claimed in an interview with Newshour that Iranian-sponsored strikes on US forces in eastern Syria started in 2017.

“It’s usually drone strikes or rockets or mortars, against our bases. Most of the time they don’t do any damage and they don’t cause casualties.

“The defense secretary’s point is that that’s unacceptable and President Biden authorized a military response against the same kind of guys that carried that out on behalf of the Iranian regime.”

According to the US Defense Department, the drone targeted a maintenance facility on a coalition installation close to Hasakah, killing the contractor and injuring five US service members and a second contractor.

The US strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, killed six pro-Iranian fighters in Deir al-Zour city, six in al-Bukamal, and two in the al-Mayadeen desert.

Iran has remained silent.

As part of the US-led international coalition fighting the jihadist group Islamic State, around 900 US troops are now operating out of locations in southern and eastern Syria without the consent of the Syrian government. (IS).

They are entrusted with preventing a rebirth of IS, whose militants formerly held swathes of territory in Syria until being ousted in 2019 as a result of various assaults undertaken by pro-government troops backed by Iran and Russia as well as US-backed Kurdish and Arab militia fighters.

Since the civil conflict broke out in 2011, the IRGC has established a sizable presence in Syria, sending hundreds Iranian troops to assist President Bashar al-Assad’s army and to arm and train thousands more militiamen.

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