The US on Wednesday, for the second time in recent weeks, carried out strikes against a weapon storage facility in eastern Syria that the Pentagon said was used by Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and affiliated groups.
As tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas conflict, US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 40 times in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed forces since the start of last month. Forty-five US troops have sustained traumatic brain injuries or minor wounds.
The strikes were conducted by two F-15 jets and were in response to the recent attacks against US forces, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
Photo: AP
The attacks against US troops must stop, he added.
“If attacks by Iran’s proxies against US forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people,” Austin added.
The US has occasionally carried out retaliatory strikes against Iranian-backed forces in the region after they attack US forces.
On Oct. 26, US forces attacked two facilities used by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and groups it backs.
The US has 900 troops in Syria, and 2,500 more in neighboring Iraq, on a mission to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group, which in 2014 seized large swathes of both countries but was later defeated.
In related news, Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza City yesterday as soldiers battled street-by-street with Hamas militants, and tens of thousands of Palestinians desperate for safety fled their homes southward in the besieged territory.
After more than a month of intense bombardment, hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in a “dire humanitarian situation” in battle zones without enough food and water, the UN said.
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on Wednesday said that his forces were “tightening the stranglehold” around Gaza City, as they pressed an offensive launched in response to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 people in Israel, mainly civilians.
The militants also took more than 240 people hostage, among them babies and elderly people.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says has killed more than 10,500 people, many of them children.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza.
A source close to Hamas said that talks are underway for the release of a dozen hostages, including six US citizens, in return for a three-day ceasefire.
UN rights chief Volker Turk condemned Israel over its bombardment and its orders to Gazans to flee southward.
“The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” he told reporters at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the only way route out of Gaza not controlled by Israel.
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