US hits Iran-backed militants with fourth round of retaliatory airstrikes

US hits Iran-backed militants with fourth round of retaliatory airstrikes

Iran-backed groups have attacked US forces more than 60 times since mid-Oct.

ByMatt Seyler

November 21, 2023, 7:52 PM

Two U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons assigned to the 555th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, release flares over Iraq, Feb. 6, 2020. Staff Sgt. Matthew Lotz/455th Air Expeditionary Wing Pub/U.S. Air Force

United States fighter jets struck two sites in Iraq used by Iran-linked militants on Wednesday morning local time, according to U.S. Central Command and defense officials.

This is the fourth round of American retaliatory airstrikes in response to a near-daily spate of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed groups. The attacks began in mid-October, 10 days after Hamas' deadly terror attack on Israel. The Pentagon counts more than five dozen such attacks since then.

“U.S. forces have been attacked approximately 66 times since October 17,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday night. “32 separate times in Iraq, and 34 separate times in Syria.”

Wednesday's strikes were partly in response to militants launching two close-range ballistic missiles at U.S. forces on al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq, injuring as many as eight service members. This was the first use of ballistic missiles against Americans in the region since mid-October, which the U.S. perceived as a definite escalation, a U.S. official told ABC News.

The latest U.S. airstrikes in Iraq hit a command and control node and an operations center, the official told ABC News.

“On the morning of November 22 in Iraq, U.S. Central Command forces conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq. The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including the one in Iraq on November 21, which involved use of close-range ballistic missiles,” a statement from Central Command read.

In addition to the four pre-planned retaliatory airstrikes by the U.S. since Oct. 17, there have been several instances of American forces immediately firing back at Iran-linked attackers when their locations were identified.

The most recent of those counterstrikes occurred Tuesday when an American AC-130 gunship already airborne in the region spotted a group of militants launch the aforementioned close-range ballistic missiles at U.S. troops stationed in western Iraq. The gunship crew tracked the attackers in their vehicle and struck back, killing several of them, according to U.S. officials.

“This self-defense strike resulted in some hostile fatalities,” Singh said Tuesday.

The three other pre-planned U.S. airstrikes in recent weeks destroyed weapon storage facilities, a safe house and another command and control center in Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxy militants to launch attacks, according to Pentagon officials. Some militants are expected to have been killed in at least some of those strikes.

It will likely take days for the U.S. to conduct a full damage assessment of the two sites hit in Iraq on Wednesday, so it is unclear whether any enemies were killed, according to the U.S. official.

While the U.S. counterattacks are meant to discourage further aggression, so far there has been no sign of them slowing.

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