The U.S. launched airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed Shia militia members in Iraq Thursday in retaliation for a deadly attack in which two American troops were killed, American officials said.
The airstrike targeted militia members believed responsible for the rocket attack that killed and wounded American and British troops at Camp Taji, a base north of Baghdad, on Wednesday.
Officials said multiple strikes by U.S. manned aircraft hit five locations and mainly targeted Kataib Hezbollah weapons facilities inside Iraq.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at the Pentagon earlier Thursday that President Donald Trump had given him the authority to take whatever action he deemed necessary.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States was working ‘to bring the perpetrators to justice’ before the airstrike was confirmed on Thursday evening in retaliation for Wednesday’s attack from Iran-backed militia which killed three, including two American troops
Army Colonel Myles Caggins, the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson, retweeted these images of rocket launchers on Wednesday after two U.S. troops were killed in an attack on an Iraqi base by Iran-backed militia. The U.S. has now launched an airstrike in retaliation
Wednesday’s attack is said to have involved small rockets, pictured here, and killed two American troops and one British personnel. A U.S. airstrike targeted five locations in retaliation for the attack on Thursday night after Trump allowed for whatever action deemed necessary
‘We’re going to take this one step at a time, but we’ve got to hold the perpetrators accountable,’ Esper said.
‘You don’t get to shoot at our bases and kill and wound Americans and get away with it.’
‘As I stated earlier, the United States will not tolerate Iran-backed attacks against our people, our interests, and our Allies,’ Esper added in a tweet.
‘All options are on the table as we work with our partners to bring the perpetrators to justice, and maintain deterrence.’
The airstrikes were also confirmed in a tweet from Department of DefensePress Secretary Ayyssa Farah.
‘This evening, the U.S. conducted defensive precision strikes against Kataib Hizbollah facilities across Iraq. These strikes targeted 5 weapon storage facilities to significantly degrade their ability to conduct future attacks against the U.S. & coalition forces,’ she wrote.
‘These strikes were defensive, proportional, & in direct response to the threat posed by Iranian-backed Shia militia groups who continue to attack bases hosting OIR coalition forces.
‘The United States will not tolerate attacks against our people, our interests, or our allies. We will take any action necessary to protect our forces in Iraq and the region.’
Defense Secretary Mark Esper revealed President Donald Trump had given him the authority to take whatever action he deemed necessary after a deadly attack on U.S. troops in Iraq on Wednesday. The U.S. launched airstrikes in retaliation on Thursday night
The strikes marked a rapid escalation in tensions with Tehran and its proxy groups in Iraq, just two months after Iran carried out a massive ballistic missile attack against American troops at a base in Iraq.
They came just hours after top U.S. defense leaders threatened retaliation for the Wednesday rocket attack, making clear that they knew who did it and that the attackers would be held accountable.
Officials said Karbala Province and Jurf al Sakhar were two of the locations.
At the White House, Trump had also hinted that a U.S. counterpunch could be coming, telling reporters, ‘We’ll see what the response is.’
And Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters the U.S. knows ‘with a high degree of certainty’ who launched the attack.
On Capitol Hill earlier in the day, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, told senators the deaths of U.S. and coalition troops created a ‘red line’ for the U.S., but said he didn’t think Iran has ‘a good understanding of where our red line is’.
Asked if any counterattack could include a strike inside Iran, Esper said, ‘We are focused on the group that we believe perpetrated this in Iraq’.
US soldiers walk around at the Taji base complex in Iraq which hosts Iraqi and US troops. Two American troops were killed in a rocket attack on the base at around 7.35pm Wednesday
Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson Army Colonel Myles Caggins shared these pictures on Twitter when confirming Wednesday’s rocket attack which killed two Americans
Two U.S. troops and one British service member were killed and 14 other personnel were wounded when 18 rockets hit the base Wednesday.
The U.S. military said the 107 mm Katyusha rockets were fired from a truck launcher that was found by Iraqi security forces near the base after the attack.
U.S. officials have not publicly said what group they believe launched the rocket attack, but Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shia militia group, was the likely perpetrator.
And the U.S. strikes, which came in the middle of the night in Iraq, targeted that group.
Kataib Hezbollah was responsible for a late December rocket attack on a military base in Kirkuk that killed a U.S. contractor, prompting American military strikes in response.
That in turn led to protests at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
They were followed January 3 by a U.S. airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful military officer, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leader of the Iran-backed militias in Iraq, of which Kataib Hezbollah is a member.
In response to the Soleimani killing, Iran launched a massive ballistic missile attack on January 8, at al-Asad air base in Iraq, that resulted in traumatic brain injuries to more than 100 American troops.
McKenzie told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday morning that the killing of Soleimani and the increase in U.S. troops and assets in the region has made clear to Iran that the U.S. will defend its interests there.
He said the U.S. has re-established a level of deterrence for state-on-state attacks by Iran.
However, he said: ‘What has not been changed is their continuing desire to operate through their proxies indirectly again us. That is a far more difficult area to deter.’
On Thursday, Esper and Milley said they spoke with their British counterparts about the attack, but declined to provide details.
Asked why none of the rockets was intercepted, Milley said there are no systems on the base capable of defending against that type of attack.
He also said the 14 injured personnel were a mix of U.S. and allied troops as well as contractors, and they will also be monitored for possible traumatic brain injury in the wake of the blasts.