US forces have commenced airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed militants in Syria and Iraq in response to a series of assaults on American military bases in the region, including a drone attack that killed three American soldiers and wounded more than 40 others.
Washington’s latest strikes come nearly a week after Sunday’s deadly attack on a secretive US base in Jordan, near the Syrian and Iraqi borders, called Tower 22. The retaliatory bombings mark “the start of what will likely be a series of larger-scale US strikes on Iranian-backed militias who have carried out attacks on US troops in the Middle East,” CNN reported on Friday, citing two unidentified American officials.
An unidentified Pentagon official told the New York Times that Friday’s airstrikes targeted a half dozen sites in Iraq and Syria, “marking a sharp escalation of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration has for four months sought to avoid.”
