At least 45 US troops operating in Iraq and Syria have sustained injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, amid escalating attacks on American bases in the two countries, Pentagon officials have disclosed.
The updated figures are more than double the previously reported number of injuries among US troops divulged by the DoD in late October.
The Pentagon did not elaborate on the nature of the updated figures, except to say that about half were brain injuries, with the remainder consisting of unspecified “minor injuries.” 32 of the injuries were said to have occurred at the illegal US garrison at al-Tanf in southern Syria near the Iraqi-Jordanian border, with another 13 reported at the al-Asad air base in western Iraq (where a US contractor was also killed after suffering a heart attack while sheltering in place), and one at a base in Erbil, northern Iraq.
Militias have also targeted a number of other facilities where American troops are present, including some of the dozen or so illegal US bases in northeastern Syria, such as the al-Omar and Conoco oil and gas fields. Sources told Lebanese media on Tuesday that multiple drones had struck targets inside a US base near the village of al-Khadra in Syria’s Hasakah province early Tuesday morning. Separately, militias launched a drone strike on US troops near Erbil’s airport.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iraqi militias formed in 2014 to crush Daesh (ISIS)* has claimed responsibility for most of the past month’s attacks on US forces. On Monday, the group announced that it had begun the fielding and launch of the Aqsa 1, a new ballistic missile which bears superficial resemblance to Iran’s Fath-360 missile (the latter has a range of up to 120 km and a 150 kg warhead). Iran is known to have provided Iraqi militias with significant advisory, training and technical support during the campaign against Daesh, but has dismissed Washington's characterization of Iraqi militias as its "proxies."
Defense officials told US media on Monday that bases in Iraq and Syria containing US personnel had been targeted at least 10 times since last Thursday alone, and 38 times since October 17, when the escalation began. 19 of the strikes took place after the US launched “self defense strikes” in Syria on October 26.
US lawmakers sent Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin a letter on Monday calling on the DoD to “proactively work to reduce the risk to service members both to protect our men and women in uniform and to preserve the capability and readiness of forward operating bases.” The letter made no mention of a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Matt Gaetz earlier this year calling for the withdrawal of all US forces from Syria to permanently remove them from harm’s way.
The ramping up of attacks against US forces in the region comes in the wake of the publication of a bombshell report in US media over the weekend citing medical research pointing to links between mental health problems including brain damage suffered by vets of the US’s Middle East wars engaged in the firing of heavy cannons, mortars and shoulder-fired rockets.
Militias in Iraq and Syria began to dramatically ramp up attacks on US forces in 2020, after Washington assassinated Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad while he was on a peace mission aimed at normalizing Iran’s relations with Saudi Arabia. The assassination prompted Iran to rain ballistic missiles down on US bases in Iraq. Those strikes left over 100 US troops with traumatic brain injuries.
The US has ignored demands by Damascus to end the occupation of al-Tanf and eastern Syria, and flouted the Iraqi parliament’s request that all American forces in the country be removed. Instead, US forces have engaged in the systematic looting of Syria’s energy and food resources, and renamed their operations in Iraq from a ‘combat mission’ to ‘advise and assist’ status.
*Daesh (also known as ISIL/ISIS/IS/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.