The US military on Thursday struck Iran-backed militias in eastern Syria, killing at least 22 fighters, a war monitor said, with the Pentagon saying that the action was a message from the administration of US President Joe Biden after rocket attacks targeted US troops in Iraq.
In its first military action against Iran-linked groups since Biden became president five weeks ago, the Pentagon said that it had carried out airstrikes at a Syria-Iraq border control point used by Iran-backed groups, destroying “multiple facilities.”
“At President Biden’s direction,” the US raids targeted “infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel.”
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 22 fighters were killed when the strike hit three trucks loaded with munitions traveling from Iraq near the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal.
Militia border posts were also destroyed, it said.
All of those killed were from Iraq’s state-sponsored Hashed al-Shaabi force, an umbrella group that includes many small militias with ties to Iran, it said.
The location was used by Kataeb Hezbollah and Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada, two Iraqi pro-Iran groups operating under the Hashed umbrella, Kirby said.
Syrian state television condemned the “American aggression” against the fighters, who are allied with the Damascus government.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the pro-Iran Kataeb Hezbollah was behind previous attacks on US targets.
“We’re confident in the target we went after. We know what we hit,” Austin told reporters on the plane flying to Washington after a tour of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier off California.
“We are confident that the target was being used by the same Shia [Shiite] militia that conducted the strikes” against US interests in Iraq, he said.
“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel,” Kirby said. “At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”
The Kremlin said that it was closely monitoring the situation in Syria and that it was in constant contact with the Syrian authorities.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call that he could not say whether the US had notified Russia of its plans in advance, adding that operational contacts were made through the military.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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