Joe Biden launches airstrikes on Iran-backed militia in eastern Syria, in response to recent rocket attacks in Iraq. This will be Joe Biden’s first airstrike against Iran and the militia in Syria since taking over office as the President of the United States.
Joe Biden launches airstrikes on Syria on the recommendation of the US Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin. He had said that he recommended the strike to Mr Biden, who authorized it in a phone call on Thursday morning.
“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American coalition personnel,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement. Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria for years, most recently in a rocket attack on the northern Iraqi city of Erbil last week that wounded four American contractors and one military service member.
The strikes destroyed multiple facilities at a border control point in al Bukamal, Syria, used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada, according to Kirby.
The Pentagon spokesman did not mention any casualties, but U.K.-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that 22 people were killed in the strikes, which it said had hit three trucks carrying munitions from Iraq into Syria.
The organization, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria and generally provides reliable information, said all of those killed were believed to have been members of the Iran-backed militias, the majority of them from Kataib Hezbollah.
The Observatory said the death toll was likely to rise as some of the wounded were in serious condition. The group’s sources said that immediately after the strikes, the Iranian-backed groups rushed to evacuate several sites in al Bukamal, fearing further U.S. attacks.
No statement yet from the Iran government who are looking to see how they can have a good working relationship with the new regime, following the exit of Donald Trump.