U.S. Strikes Over 85 Targets at 7 Sites in Iraq and Syria Against Iran’s Forces and Proxies
President Biden had promised to respond to the drone attack that killed three American soldiers this week. “Our response began today,” he said, in an escalation of hostilities in the Middle East.
Here is the latest news on the U.S. strikes.
The aftermath of the U.S. military strikes overnight targeting sites in Syria and Iraq used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militia began coming into focus on Saturday morning. The Biden administration warned that the strikes in retaliation for the killing of three U.S. troops last week would not be the last.
Civilians, as well as soldiers, were among those killed in Syria, the country’s defense ministry said. At least 18 members of Iran-backed groups were killed in strikes on 26 sites there, according to Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has researchers in the country. U.S. officials said they were confident the strikes on 85 targets at seven sites in the two countries had hit “exactly what they meant to hit” but that analysts would make a closer assessment in daylight.
U.S. officials said the targets were all linked to specific attacks against U.S. troops in the region, describing them as command and control operations, intelligence centers, weapons facilities and bunkers used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force and affiliated militia groups.
“Our response began today,” President Biden said in a statement, shortly after witnessing the return of the U.S. soldiers killed at a military outpost in Jordan last week.
Friday’s strikes did not hit any targets inside Iran. Both the White House and Tehran have made clear in recent days that they do not want a direct conflict.
Since the Oct. 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war, which has devastated Gaza and inflamed the Middle East, Iran and its allied militias have launched more than 160 attacks on U.S. troops in the region and have struck at commercial ships in the Red Sea.
Here are additional developments:
- The strikes used more than 125 precision-guided munitions, according to a statement by United States Central Command. The strikes took 30 minutes, officials said, and were largely conducted by two American B-1B bombers, which departed from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, early Friday for a more than 6,000-mile flight. Using U.S.-based bombers allowed commanders in the region to keep their land- and carrier-based strike aircraft in reserve for follow-up strikes, one official said.
- John F. Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, said on Friday night that the Iraqi government had been notified before the strikes.
- Israel’s defense minister has signaled that Israeli ground forces could advance on Rafah — one of the last southern Gazan cities that they have not reached. Hundreds of thousands of people have crowded for shelter from the war in that part of the enclave.
- Iran said that an Israeli strike in Syria early Friday morning had killed one of its military officers in the southern district of Damascus. Iranian media said the officer, Saeed Alidadi, was a member of the Revolutionary Guards Corps who had been deployed to Syria as a military adviser.