[ad_1]
A US airstrike in Syria targeted facilities belonging to a powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi armed group, killing one of its militants and wounding several others, an Iraqi militia official said on Friday.
The Pentagon said the attacks were in retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed a civilian contractor and wounded a US service member and other coalition troops.
The Iraqi militia officer said The Associated Press that the attacks against Kataeb Hezbollah, or the Hezbollah Brigades, struck an area along the border between the Syrian site of Boukamal versus Qaim on the Iraqi side. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the attack. Syrian war monitoring groups said the attacks affected trucks carrying weapons to a base for Iranian-backed militias in Boukamal.
“I am confident in the objective we are pursuing, we know what we got right,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters who flew with him from California to Washington, United States, shortly after the airstrikes.
The airstrike was the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration, which in its early weeks has emphasized its intention to focus more on the challenges posed by China, even as threats persist in the Middle East. Biden’s decision to strike in Syria did not appear to indicate an intention to expand US military involvement in the region, but rather to demonstrate a willingness to defend US troops in Iraq.
READ MORE:
* Iran sends mixed signals as tensions with the US ease.
* ‘Death to America’: thousands in Baghdad mourn the Iranian general assassinated by the United States
* Donald Trump claims he ordered the assassination of the Iranian general to ‘stop a war’
In the past, the United States has targeted facilities in Syria belonging to Kataeb Hezbollah, blaming it for numerous attacks on 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 that monitors the war in Syria, said the attacks were targeting a shipment of weapons that were being carried by trucks entering Syrian territory from Iraq. The group said 22 fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries that includes Kataeb Hezbollah, were killed. The report could not be independently verified.
Patrick Semansky / AP
The airstrike was the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration, which in its early weeks has emphasized its intention to focus more on the challenges posed by China, even as threats persist in the Middle East.
Defense Secretary Austin said he was “certain” that the United States had responded to “the same Shiite militants who carried out the attacks,” referring to a February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a civil contractor and wounded a US service member and another coalition. personal.
Austin said he had recommended the action to US President Joe Biden.
“We said multiple times that we will respond on our schedule,” Austin said. “We wanted to be sure of connectivity and we wanted to be sure we had the right targets.”
Earlier, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US action was a “proportionate military response” taken in conjunction with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners.
ALEX BRANDON / AP
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington.
“The operation sends an unequivocal message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel,” Kirby said.
Kirby said the US airstrikes “destroyed multiple facilities at a border checkpoint used by various 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 Law School, criticized the American attack as a violation of international law.
“The Charter of the United Nations makes it absolutely clear that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed attack against the defending state for which the target state is responsible,” he said. “None of those elements are in the attack in Syria.”
Officials in the Biden administration condemned the Feb. 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s Kurdish-led semi-autonomous region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined with certainty by whom. carried out. Officials have noted that Iran-backed Shiite militia groups have been responsible for numerous rocket attacks on US personnel or facilities in Iraq in the past.
Kirby had said Tuesday that Iraq is in charge of investigating the February 15 attack. He added that US officials could not then give “a certain attribution as to who was behind these attacks.”
Alex Brandon / AP
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself Saraya Alwiya al-Dam, in Arabic for Guardians of the Blood Brigade, claimed responsibility for the February 15 attack. A week later, a rocket attack in Baghdad’s Green Zone appeared to target the US Embassy compound, but no one was injured.
Iran said this week that it has no ties to the Bloodguard Brigade. Iranian-backed groups have been divided significantly since the US-led attack that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad more than a year ago. Both were key to commanding and controlling a wide range of Iranian-backed groups operating in Iraq.
Since his death, the militias have grown increasingly rebellious. Some analysts argue that armed groups have fragmented as a tactic to claim attacks under different names to mask their involvement.
The frequency of attacks by Shiite militia groups on US targets in Iraq declined late last year before Biden’s inauguration.
The United States under the previous Trump administration blamed Iranian-backed groups for carrying out multiple attacks in Iraq.
Trump had said that the death of an American contractor would be a red line and trigger an American escalation in Iraq. The December 2019 killing of an American civilian contractor in a rocket attack on Kirkuk sparked a tit-for-tat fight on Iraqi soil that culminated in the assassination of Iranian commander Soleimani by the United States and brought Iraq to the brink of a crisis. indirect warfare.
US forces have been significantly reduced in Iraq to 2,500 troops and are no longer engaged in combat missions with Iraqi forces in ongoing operations against the Islamic State group.
