The US has launched an overnight airstrike against Syria after a suspected Iranian drone killed an American.
A US contractor was killed and five US service members were injured yesterday when a self-destructing drone struck a maintenance facility on a base yesterday.
US intelligence analysts said the drone was of ‘Iranian origin’, the Pentagon said of the incident that happened near Hasaka at around 1:40pm.
With relations between Washington and Tehran increasingly tense, a new wave of reportedly retaliatory wave of airstrikes pelted parts of eastern Syrian today.
It came after Iran-backed militants used rockets against another base hosting US personnel in Syria’s Conoco gas field.
Syrian opposition activist groups have said the targeted sites were used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC.
The three sites were in Deir Ez-Zor, a province that borders Iraq and is dotted by oil fields.
The activist group Deir Ezzor 24 said the strikes killed four people and wounded a number of others.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the war in Syria, put the death toll from US strikes even higher at 11 Iranian-backed fighters.
They included six at an arms depot in the city of Deir el-Zour and five at military posts near Mayadeen and Boukamal.
The head of the observatory, Rami Abdurrahman, said three rockets were fired earlier today at the al-Omar oil field in Deir el-Zour that houses US troops.
Whether US warplanes carried out the attacks in Deir Ez-Zor is unclear.
The retaliation was at the direction of US President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
In a statement, Austin said US intelligence determined the drone was of Iranian origin – though he offered no evidence for this.
‘The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC,’ he said.
A US defence official claimed the American strikes were carried out by F-15E fighter jets that struck three areas in the vicinity of Deir el-Zour.
Iran uses proxy forces across the Middle East to counter the US, which has had troops in north-east Syria since 2015.
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