Troops at an Iraqi air base that bore the brunt of Iran’s first direct missile attack against US forces said that they were shocked by its intensity and grateful to emerge unscathed.
The scale of the damage at Ain al-Asad Air Base showed Iran’s destructive capability at a time when US officials have said they are still concerned that Iran-backed groups across the region could wage attacks on the US.
“It’s miraculous no one was hurt,” Lieutenant Colonel Staci Coleman, the US Air Force officer who runs the airfield, told reporters on Monday at the vast facility deep in the western Anbar desert in Iraq, where 1,500 US troops are deployed.
Photo: Reuters
“Who thinks they’re going to have ballistic missiles launched at them ... and suffer no casualties?” Coleman said.
The attack on Wednesday last week came hours after US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that the US should expect retaliation for killing Iranian major general Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq the previous week.
The killing raised fears of a new Middle East war, but the US, Iraq and other countries with troops at the base said that no one was hurt.
US military leaders have said that was due to commanders on the ground, not Tehran’s goodwill.
At one site, a cruise missile left a large crater and incinerated living quarters made from shipping containers. Heavy concrete blast walls were knocked over and the shipping containers were smashed and charred along with their contents, including bicycles, chairs and other furniture.
Several soldiers said that one of their number had come very close to being blown up inside a shelter behind the blast walls.
Almost a dozen missiles hit the air base, where US forces carried out “scatter plans” to move soldiers and equipment to a range of fortified areas apart from one another.
The US did not have Patriot missile defenses at the base, putting the onus on local commanders to protect their troops.
“We’d got notification there could be an attack a few hours prior, so had moved equipment,” Staff Sergeant Tommie Caldwell said.
Coleman said that by 10pm that day, all the staff she manages were ready to take cover.
“People took this very seriously,” she said.
Three-and-a-half hours later, the missiles started arriving.
Several soldiers said that the bombardment lasted two hours.
Staff Sergeant Armando Martinez, who had been out in the open to watch for casualties, said that he could not believe how easily one missile leveled the concrete blast walls.
“When a rocket strikes, that’s one thing; but a ballistic missile, it’s like terror,” he said. “You see a white light like a shooting star and then a few seconds later it lands and explodes. The other day, after the attack, one colleague saw an actual shooting star and panicked.”
One missile landed on the tarmac of a parking and servicing area for UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters helping to ferry equipment in the fight against Islamic State group insurgents.
The helicopters had been moved, but the missile destroyed two light hangars and badly damaged portable buildings nearby.
“We must have been in the bunkers for more than five hours, maybe seven or eight,” US Air Force Master Sergeant Kenneth Goodwin said.
“They knew what they were aiming at by targeting the airfield and parking area,” he added.
It was the latest strike against an air base that has figured prominently in high-ranking US officials’ visits to Iraq.
“After these missile attacks, when we hear of possible militia rocket attacks, we tend to think: ‘Oh only rockets ... that’s a change,’” Coleman said, describing the common feeling when the missile attacks were over as “sheer relief.”
On Sunday, the Iraqi military said that four people had been wounded in an attack on Balad Air Base in northern Iraq, which also houses US personnel.
Military sources identified the wounded as Iraqi soldiers.
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