The United States carried out strikes against pro-Iranian armed groups in Iraq in retaliation for recent attacks targeting American troops or the anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq and Syria, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday, January 23.
“US military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Brigades and other Iranian-affiliated groups in Iraq
,” Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
“These precision strikes are a direct response to a series of attacks against U.S. and coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias
,” he said. reference to the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group.
“We are not seeking to escalate the conflict in the region
,” but
“we are fully prepared to take further steps to protect our people and our facilities
,” he added.
140 attacks against American soldiers
The American military Command in the Middle East (Centcom) specified that the strikes targeted
“the headquarters of the Hezbollah Brigades, as well as storage locations and training sites for rockets, missiles and unidirectional attack drones”
.
The strikes targeted the Hezbollah Brigades in an area about sixty kilometers south of Baghdad (Jurf al-Sakhr) as well as in the Al-Qaim region, on the border with neighboring Syria, the AFP a security official and another official of Hachd al-Chaabi, a pro-Iran group which includes the Hezbollah Brigades.
These two officials reported two deaths in the Al-Qaïm sector.
Since mid-October, more than 140 drone attacks or rocket attacks have targeted American soldiers and those of the coalition in Iraq and Syria, in an explosive regional context fueled by the repercussions of the war in Gaza between Israel - ally from Washington - and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, supported by Iran.
Washington has around 2,500 soldiers in Iraq and nearly 900 in Syria engaged with the international coalition launched in 2014 to fight the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group.