Drone strike kills U.S. contractor in Syria, injures 6 others

Thursday’s strike by an Iranian-made drone killed a US contractor and wounded five American soldiers and another contractor in northeastern Syria, the Pentagon said.

American forces said they retaliated with “precision airstrikes” in Syria targeting facilities used by groups linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, with activist groups saying they killed at least four people.

US troops entered Syria in 2015, supporting allied forces in the fight against the Islamic State group. The US still maintains a base near Hasakah in northeastern Syria where the drone strike took place on Thursday. There are approximately 900 US troops, and many more contractors, in Syria, including in the north and further south and east.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he had authorized a retaliatory strike in the direction of President Joe Biden.

“As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary steps to defend our people and will respond at the time and place of our choosing,” Austin said. “No group will attack our forces with impunity.”

Reports of attacks on at least 2 Syrian sites

Austin said in a statement that the American intelligence community had determined the drone was of Iranian origin, but there was no other direct evidence to support the claim. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been accused of carrying out bomb-carrying drone attacks in the wider Middle East.

Since the US drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Iran has sought to “make life difficult for US forces deployed east of the Euphrates,” said Hamidreza Azizi, an expert at the German Institute for International Affairs and Security.

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The Pentagon said the three wounded had to be transported to medical facilities in Iraq.

Overnight, videos on social media showed explosions in Deir el-Zour, Syria, a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields. Iranian-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the region, which has also seen suspected Israeli airstrikes in recent months targeting Iranian supply routes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported that an American strike killed six Iranian-backed fighters at a weapons depot in the Harabesh neighborhood of Deir el-Zour. The Observatory, which relies on a network of local contacts in Syria, said a US bomb on a post near the town of Mayadeen killed two fighters.

A separate American strike hit a military post near the town of Boukamal along the border with Iraq, killing three other fighters, the Observatory said.

The AP could not immediately confirm the activist’s report.

Iran and Syria did not immediately acknowledge the attack, nor did officials at the United Nations in New York respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The incident once again led to the use of drones in war. In recent months, Russia has begun using drones in attacks on sites across Ukraine that Western countries and experts say could be tied to Tehran.

Iran has issued a series of conflicting denials about drones being used in the war.

The incident could further escalate US-Iranian tensions

In the Middle East, Iran relies on proxy forces to counter US and Israeli activities.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-held areas of Syria in recent years, including an attack on Aleppo airport this week, but has rarely acknowledged or discussed the operation.

Addressing the US House armed services committee on Thursday, US Army General Michael Kurilla, head of the US military’s Central Command, warned lawmakers that “Iran is now exponentially more militarily capable than it was five years ago.”

Kurilla also said that Iran has launched 78 attacks against US positions in Syria since January 2021.

The US also has concerns about the progress of Tehran’s nuclear program, after the agreement with Iran placing limits on its development was canceled by Donald Trump.

The strikes and the US response threaten to fuel renewed efforts to ease tensions in the wider Middle East, where rival powers have made steps toward detente in recent days after years of turmoil.

Saudi Arabia and Iran recently committed to reopening their embassies in each other’s countries. The kingdom also acknowledged efforts to reopen the Saudi embassy in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has been supported by Iran during his country’s long war.

The United Nations estimates that more than 300,000 civilians have been killed in the Syrian war since 2011. That figure does not include soldiers and rebels killed in the conflict; the number is believed to be tens of thousands.