“I believe as of today, there've been approximately 78 attacks on our bases,” said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, adding that the numbers do not include attacks carried out in the past 24 hours.
Singh said 66 US personnel “received non-serious, non-life-threatening” injuries, adding that at this moment they have all returned to work.
US troops in Iraq, the Kurdistan Region, and Syria have been the target of a series of rocket and drone attacks by pro-Iran militias since mid-October, in response to Washington supporting Israel in its war against Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups backed by Iran and affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed responsibility for most of the attacks.
The US forces since then have responded with several retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed militia targets in Syria and Iraq.
On Monday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that forces assigned to Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) had “engaged five militants preparing to launch a one-way attack drone,” the previous day, adding that CJTF-OIR forces have responded “in self-defense” with a drone killing all five militants and destroying their drone.
Ali Sabah, a commander of a Sunni militia under the umbrella of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) told Rudaw that a vehicle belonging to the PMF’s 40th brigade had been targeted, and five bodies were retrieved from the site of the incident.
In response to the attack, the Islamic Resistance attacked the US’s Rumaylan (Rmeilan) base in Syria on the same night, the group said in a statement on its Telegram channel and was later confirmed by CENTCOM on Tuesday.
The attack on the PMF is the second one in less than two weeks. On November 22, CENTCOM stated that they struck two facilities of pro-Iran militia groups in Iraq in retaliation for attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani “vehemently” condemned the US retaliatory airstrikes on Jurf al-Nasr during a phone call with US State Secretary Antony Blinken, describing the attacks as a “violation to the Iraqi sovereignty,” since they took place without government knowledge. At the same time, the US top diplomat renewed his call on the Iraqi government to fulfill its commitment to protect US personnel in Iraq.
Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.
