Pentagon officials say the strikes are retaliation for recent attacks on US interests in Iraq, including a February 15 missile attack in northern Iraq that killed a civilian contractor and injured a member of the US service and other coalition troops.
John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday that two Air Force F-15E planes fired seven missiles, completely destroying nine facilities and severely damaging two other facilities, making the two “functionally destroyed.” He said the facilities, at the “entry checkpoints” at the border, were used by militia groups that the US holds responsible for a series of recent attacks on US interests in Iraq.
Kirby said the facilities hit in the attack were near Boukamal, on the Syrian side of the Iraqi border, along the Euphrates River.
“This location is known to facilitate the work of the Iranian aligned militia group,” he said. He added that the US has preliminary information about the victims at the scene of the attack, but refused to release any details pending the completion of a more extensive damage assessment. He described the site as a “complex” that had previously been used by the Islamic State group when it was in charge of the area.
An Iraqi militia official told The Associated Press that strikes against Kataeb Hezbollah or the Hezbollah Brigades hit an area along the border between the Syrian site of Boukamal facing the Iraqi Qaim. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak about the attack. Syrian war monitoring groups say the strikes hit trucks moving weapons to a Iranian-backed militia base in Boukamal.
“I’m confident in the target I’ve been aiming for, we know what we hit,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters flying with him from California to Washington shortly after the airstrikes on Thursday night, Eastern Standard Time. .
The Biden administration in its first weeks underlined its intention to put more emphasis on China’s challenges, even if the threats in the Middle East persist. Biden’s decision to attack Syria does not appear to signal an intention to expand US military involvement in the region, but rather to demonstrate a willingness to defend US troops in Iraq and send a message to Iran.
The United States has in the past targeted Syrian Kataeb Hezbollah facilities, which it has blamed on numerous attacks targeting US personnel and interests in Iraq. The Iraqi Kataeb is separate from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group monitoring the war in Syria, said the strikes involved a transport of weapons taken by trucks entering Syrian territory from Iraq. The group said 22 fighters from the People’s Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi umbrella group of Shiite paramilitaries, including Kataeb Hezbollah, were killed. The report could not be independently verified.
In a statement, the group confirmed that one of its fighters had been killed and said it reserved the right to retaliate without elaborating. Kataeb Hezbollah, like other Iranian-backed factions, keeps fighters in Syria both to fight the Islamic State group and to assist Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces in the country’s civil war.
Defense Secretary Austin said he was “confident” that the United States had attacked “the same Shiite militants who led the strikes,” referring to a missile attack in northern Iraq that killed a civilian contractor and injured a service member. American other members of the coalition.
Austin said he recommended President Biden’s action.
“We’ve said many times that we’re going to respond to our timeline,” Austin said. “We wanted to be sure of connectivity and we wanted to make sure we had the right targets.”
Earlier, Kirby said the US action was a “proportionate military response” taken along with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners.
“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel,” Kirby said.
Kirby said the US airstrikes “destroyed several facilities at a border checkpoint used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups,” including Kataeb Hezbollah and Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada.
No further details were immediately available.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame School of Law, criticized the US attack as a violation of international law.
“The Charter of the United Nations clearly shows that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is legal only in response to an armed attack on the defending state for which the target state is responsible,” she said. “None of these elements are being met in the strike in Syria.”
Syria condemned the US strike as “a cowardly and systematic US aggression”, warning that the attack would have consequences.
“This aggression is a negative indication of the policies of the new US administration, which should adhere to international legitimacy, not the law of the jungle,” a statement from the Syrian foreign ministry said.
Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the Kurdish town of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous region, but as early as this week, officials said they did not know for sure who carried it out.
Kirby said on Tuesday that Iraq was responsible for investigating the February 15 attack. He added that US officials could not then give a “certain attribution as to who was behind these attacks.”
A little-known Shiite militant group called Saraya Alwiya al-Dam, in Arabic for the Guardians of Blood Brigade, claimed responsibility for the February 15 attack. One week later, a rocket attack in the green area of Baghdad erupted to target the US embassy complex, but no one was injured.
This week, Iran said it had no ties to the Blood Guard Brigade. Iranian-backed groups have split significantly since the US-led strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad more than a year ago. Both have been instrumental in commanding and controlling a wide range of Iranian-backed groups operating in Iraq.
Since their deaths, the militias have become increasingly undisciplined. Some analysts say the armed groups broke up as a tactic to claim attacks under various names to mask their involvement.
US forces have been significantly reduced in Iraq to 2,500 and are no longer participating in combat missions with Iraqi forces in ongoing operations against the Islamic State group.
Baldor and Burns reported from Washington, DC
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