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WASHINGTON – The United States on Thursday carried out an airstrike in eastern Syria against structures belonging to what the Pentagon has called Iran-backed militias responsible for recent attacks on US and allied personnel in Iraq .
The strikes were authorized by President Biden in response to recent attacks in Iraq and continued threats against US and coalition personnel, said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, who spoke with reporters traveling with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to California.
A rocket attack on Erbil airport in northern Iraq this month killed a civilian contractor from the US-led military coalition and injured six others, including a member US services and four US contractors.
U.S. officials said the military response was essentially a tiny demonstration strike: a bomb dropped on a small cluster of buildings on the Syrian-Iraqi border used to transport militia fighters and weapons inside and out. outside the country.
The strike was just over the Syrian border to prevent a diplomatic return to the Iraqi government. The Pentagon has proposed several groups of larger targets, but Mr. Biden approved the smaller option, US officials said.
The US airstrikes on Thursday “specifically destroyed several facilities at a border checkpoint used by a number of Iranian-backed militias, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada,” Kirby said.
“This proportionate military response has been carried out in parallel with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners,” Kirby said. “The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect US and coalition personnel.”
Mr Kirby said the US retaliation was aimed at punishing the perpetrators of the rocket attack but not at escalating hostilities with Iran, with which the Biden administration has sought to resume talks over a nuclear deal that the President Donald J. Trump had put it aside.
“We have acted in a deliberate manner which aims to defuse the overall situation both in eastern Syria and in Iraq,” Kirby said.
Mr Biden authorized the strikes Thursday morning, while his defense secretary was in a hotel in San Diego, preparing to visit the aircraft carrier Nimitz, which was returning home from the Persian Gulf.
Austin said he was convinced that the targeted facilities were being used by the militias responsible for the attacks. Speaking to reporters on his plane Thursday night, he said the Biden administration had been “deliberate” in its approach.
“We have authorized and encouraged the Iraqis to investigate and develop intelligence, and it has been very helpful to us in refining the target,” he said.
The administration took a more measured response to the rocket shooting in Erbil than the campaign launched by Mr. Trump against Iran and the past actions of his proxies in Iraq – one that has often caught the Iraqi government in crossfire. .
Administration officials have said since the Erbil attack that the United States will respond when and where it chooses.
Even so, the deliberate nature of the new administration’s approach has raised questions in Washington and Baghdad as to where Mr. Biden’s red lines lie when it comes to responding to attacks by militia-backed militias. Iran targeting the Americans in Iraq.
Few details of the attack, or damage, were available Thursday evening.
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