The US military launched six targeted airstrikes in Syria on Thursday, killing eight Iranians in retribution for an Iranian drone attack on a coalition facility that killed one American.
According to the Defense Department, at 1:38 p.m. local time, Iranian forces' Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps crashed a UAV into a structure close to Hasakah in northeastern Syria, killing one US contractor, according to Fox News. Five US military men and a contractor were injured in the Iran drone attack.
There were at least eight Iranian militants killed in two separate US Airstrike Syria, per the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict on behalf of the opposition.
Six Iranian-backed militants were killed in a US airstrike on an armaments stockpile near Harabesh, east of the city of Deir el-Zour. The Observatory, which depends on sources inside Syria to report, claims that two more fighters were killed in a second US attack on a checkpoint in the vicinity of Mayadeen, per CBS News.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that President Joe Biden gave him the go-ahead to launch a retaliation strike after the Iran drone attack.
"As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing," Austin said, noting that no group will attack US soldiers without consequence, per Yahoo! News.
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Supposed footage of blasts in Syria's Deir Ez-Zor, a vital region that borders Iraq and has oil resources, appeared on social media overnight.
The region is governed by Iranian-backed militias and the Syrian military, and it has reportedly been the focus of Israeli attacks in recent months.
Because of concerns with Iran, the US previously attacked Syria under the Joe Biden administration. Biden conducted three separate strikes there in 2021.
Hamidreza Azizi of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs noted that Iran has worked "to make life difficult "for American soldiers stationed east of the Euphrates" since the 2020 U.S. drone strike that assassinated Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
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