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National Security Council spokesman John Kirby speaking to reporters in Washington on January 31, 2024. Photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - US National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday said the recent deadly drone attack against American troops in Jordan was carried out by the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq which has already claimed responsibility for the strike.
A drone strike on Sunday killed at least three US service members in an American military base in northeast Jordan, near the Syrian border. Washington previously blamed groups supported by pro-Iran Kataib Hezbollah for the attack.
“We believe that the attack in Jordan was planned, resourced and facilitated by an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which contains multiple groups including Kataib Hezbollah,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.
“This certainly has the earmarks of the kinds of things that Kataib Hezbollah does… The attribution that our intelligence community is comfortable with is that this was done by the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq,” he added.
This comes one day after Kataib Hezbollah announced the suspension of all its attacks on US troops "to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government” without elaborating.
Kataib Hezbollah is part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has already claimed responsibility for the drone strike.
There have been at least 165 attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria since mid-October, according to the Pentagon. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed most of them, linking it to the US support for Israel in its war in Gaza.
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 the Islamic State (ISIS), which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.
Kirby said on Tuesday that the US response to the Jordan attack will include “multiple actions.”
The US National Guard Bureau on Wednesday confirmed that in addition to the soldiers who died in the Jordan attack 41 others servicemen were injured.
“Twenty-seven were able to return to duty while 14 others continue to be evaluated for follow-on care, including one requiring medical evacuation from Jordan who is in stable condition,” it said in a statement.
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he had decided on a response to the drone strike.
“I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for,” he added as he set off for Florida.
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