“We can confirm an attack last night by Iran-backed militias using a close-range ballistic missile against U.S. and Coalition forces at Al-Asad airbase, which resulted in eight injuries and some minor damage to infrastructure,” CENTCOM said.
“Immediately following the attack, a U.S. military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iran-backed militia personnel involved in this attack. This self-defense strike resulted in several enemy casualties,” it added.
The strike targeted Iran-backed militiamen in western Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib district on Tuesday dawn, killing one. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq hours after announced the death of a member of Kataib Hezbollah, a pro-Iran Iraqi militia designated as a terrorist organization by Washington for attacking American troops in Iraq.
On Friday, the US slapped new sanctions on Kataib Hezbollah for their connection to recent drone and rocket attacks on bases housing US troops in Iraq and Syria.
The US has carried out numerous retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed militia targets in Syria, who have carried out dozens of attacks on US personnel in Iraq and Syria in response for American support for Israel in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
On November 13, a US retaliatory strike targeted two Iran-linked facilities in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province.
Days prior, the US targeted a weapons storage facility in Deir ez-Zor linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), at the direction of President Joe Biden, two weeks after it targeted two facilities in the country that were being used by Iran-backed militias.
US troops in Iraq and Syria have come under target of a series of rocket and drone attacks by pro-Iran militias since mid-October, in retaliation to Washington’s support for Israel in its war against Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for their cross-border incursion into Israel on October 7.
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 ISIS, which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared devoid of territorial control in 2017 and 2019 respectively.
