Three U.S. service members were killed and an additional 25 were wounded Saturday night at an American base in Jordan in a drone attack launched by Iranian-backed militias.
The assault marks the first time American troops have been killed in months of drone and missile attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, and now Jordan that began not long after Hamas militants killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7.
The military command overseeing U.S. forces in the Middle East said in a statement Sunday that troops were killed and wounded in a one-way drone attack that “impacted at a base in northeast Jordan.”
The base, Tower 22, is on the border with Syria.
In a statement, President Joe Biden said “we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”
A White House official said the president was briefed Sunday morning on the attack by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer.
In a recorded interview posted Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week,” Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown said the U.S. does not want the conflict in the Middle East to continue to broaden.
“The goal is to deter them and we don’t want to go down a path of greater escalation that drives to a much broader conflict within the region,” he said.
American and British warships have also been busy shooting down drones and ballistic missiles by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. Several commercial ships have been struck, disrupting global trade routes in the Red Sea.
Since October, Iran proxies have hit U.S. and allied forces in the Middle East 158 times, though so far they have caused only minor injuries and damage to infrastructure.
The Tower 22 base has seen action before. On Oct. 23, Iran-backed militants in Syria launched multiple one-way attack drones close to al-Tanf Garrison, a small base near the border with Jordan, POLITICO reported previously. Coalition forces at Tower 22 took down the drones, which fell on the Syrian side of the border.
Eugene Daniels and Lara Seligman contributed to this report.
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