The US launched air strikes against Iranian forces and allied militias in Iraq and Syria on Friday, with US President Joe Biden vowing more to come in retaliation for a deadly drone attack on a US base in Jordan.
The US blamed the drone attack on Sunday last week on forces backed by Iran, but did not strike inside the country’s territory on Friday, with both Washington and Tehran seemingly keen to avoid an all-out war.
“Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” Biden said in a statement.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond,” he added.
The strikes targeted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and “affiliated militia groups,” with US forces — including long-range bombers flown from the US — hitting “more than 85 targets,” the US Central Command said in a statement.
“The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it added.
Targets included command and control and intelligence centers, as well as rocket, missile and drone storage facilities belonging to “militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against US and coalition forces.”
The strikes killed at least 18 pro-Iran fighters in Syria’s east, war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Iraqi general Yehia Rasool, a spokesman for Iraqi prime minister, called the strikes a “violation” of his country’s sovereignty and said they would bring “disastrous consequences for the security and stability of Iraq and the region.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani has called for the departure of international troops from Iraq after a previous US strike in Baghdad.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Washington “did inform the Iraqi government prior to the strikes,” but did not elaborate on Baghdad’s response.
Kirby told journalists the strikes lasted about 30 minutes, though they involved a lengthy trip for the B-1 bombers that flew from the US. He said the US Department of Defense was still assessing damage from the strikes, but added that the US believed they were successful and made clear that more would follow.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman said that at least 26 major sites housing pro-Iranian groups were destroyed in Syria, including weapons depots.
The strikes represent a “significant escalation,” said Allison McManus, managing director for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress.
However, she was skeptical about the impact, adding: “We have not seen that similar tit-for-tat strikes have had a deterrent effect.”
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS