ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The US late Sunday carried out retaliatory precision airstrikes against two Iran-linked facilities in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province in response to repeated attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
“U.S. military forces conducted precision strikes today on facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) … these strikes were conducted against a training facility and a safe house near the cities of Abu Kamal and Mayadin, respectively,” Austin said in a statement.
It is the third time in less than three weeks that Washington has carried out retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed militia targets in Syria, who have carried out dozens of attack on US personnel in Iraq and Syria in response for American support for Israel in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
“The President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” Austin said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported that eight pro-Iran fighters were killed in the strikes and that a warehouse was "completely destroyed," adding that the death toll is expected to rise.
On Wednesday, the US targeted an IRGC-linked weapons storage facility in eastern Syria, at the direction of President 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.
Updated at 10:40 am with SOHR death toll.