A drone strike Sunday night that targeted a military base in eastern Syria where U.S. troops are stationed left at least six allied Kurdish soldiers dead, officials said.
The attack took place at a training camp at the al-Omar base in Syria's eastern Deir el-Zour province, the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement on Monday. release. According to the statement, the drone attack took place in an area where the forces' command units were training.
No American soldiers were killed or injured in the attack, they said.
The attack was the first significant attack in Syria or Iraq since the United States launched strikes over the weekend against Iranian-backed militias. Militia fighters have been carrying out attacks against US forces and civilian targets in the region since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas in October.
Houthis promise 'escalation' after US, UK launch more strikes in Yemen
This photograph released by the Ministry of Defense on Sunday 4 February 2024 shows an RAF Typhoon FGR4 aircraft returning to base, following strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. (AS1 Leah Jones/RAF via AP)
The SDF initially blamed “mercenaries backed by the Syrian regime” for Sunday's attack, but after investigating the attack, they blamed “militias backed by Iran.”
The Islamic Resistance, an umbrella group for all Iranian-backed Iraqi militias in the country, claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack and released a video they say shows them launching the drone used in the attack.
Since October 17, there have been more than 165 strikes against US targets in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. (FoxNews)
Sunday's attack came after the US military carried out strikes against Houthi militant targets in Yemen over the weekend.
US Central Command forces said Sunday that they carried out a “self-defense” strike against a Houthi land attack cruise missile at approximately 5:30 a.m. Sana'a time.
Later, at approximately 10:30 a.m., U.S. forces attacked four anti-ship cruise missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, which they determined “posed an imminent threat to U.S. Navy ships and merchant vessels” in the Red Sea.
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Sunday's attacks also came a day after the United States and Britain launched a wave of attacks against 36 Houthi targets, aiming to degrade their capabilities.
The United States and Britain struck 36 Houthi sites in Yemen in a second wave of attacks aimed at further incapacitating Iranian-backed groups that have relentlessly attacked American and international interests in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. (AS1 Jake Green/RAF via AP)
The Houthi rebels promised an “escalation” in reaction to the attacks, and a spokesman for the group vowed to continue their own attacks “regardless of the sacrifices they cost us.”
“The bombing of several Yemeni provinces by the US-British coalition will not change our position, and we affirm that our military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are ended and the siege on its residents is lifted, regardless of the sacrifices it costs us,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti wrote in X.
The Houthi spokesman also called those attacks “ineffective” and predicted that a broader war would end the US presence in the region.
“If regional war breaks out, it will mean the end of US hegemony in the region,” he said.
The Islamic Resistance was responsible for the January drone attack on Tower 22 of the logistics support base in Jordan that left three U.S. service members dead and 40 others wounded.
In addition to Saturday's strikes, US Central Command says it carried out an additional “self-defense” strike on Sunday against a Houthi anti-ship cruise missile. (AS1 Jake Green/RAF via AP)
The United States Department of Defense identified the three deceased soldiers as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Georgia; Kennedy Specialist Ladon Sanders of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett of Savannah, Georgia.
They were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, Fort Moore, Georgia.
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“I am outraged and deeply saddened by the deaths of three of our American service members and the wounding of other American troops in an attack last night against American and coalition forces, who were deployed to a location in northeastern Jordan, near of the Syrian border, to work toward a lasting defeat of ISIS,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after the attack. “These brave Americans and their families are in my prayers, and the entire Department of Defense mourns their loss.”
The umbrella group has launched dozens of attacks, mainly using drones, against US military bases in Iraq and Syria. They have repeatedly called on US forces to withdraw from the region.
Fox News' Anders Hagstrom, Liz Friden and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
