(Dover) The United States carried out retaliatory strikes targeting elite Iranian forces and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria, just as the remains of three of its soldiers killed in Jordan were being repatriated on American soil.
Joe Biden had promised to respond to the deadly drone attack carried out last Sunday near the Syrian border, and attributed by Washington to groups supported by Iran.
The Pentagon specified that these strikes on Friday, which mobilized numerous combat aircraft including long-range bombers, had targeted more than 85 sites.
“The airstrikes involved more than 125 precision munitions,” CENTCOM said in a statement, specifying that they targeted more than 85 sites including command and intelligence centers, as well as drone storage infrastructure and missiles belonging to militias and Iranian forces “which enabled attacks against American and coalition forces”, having notably killed three American soldiers on Sunday.
“At least 13 pro-Iranian fighters were killed” during these airstrikes, said the OSDH, its head Rami Abdel Rahman specifying that the operation, still in progress around 4:30 p.m. (Eastern time), was “apparently led by the United States.”
The American executive has already made it known that reprisals would be multiple and spread over time, against different targets.
The American army therefore took action the day its commander in chief, on the tarmac of the Dover military base, paid tribute to the three soldiers killed.
PHOTO ALEX BRANDON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Joe Biden was on the tarmac at the Dover military base during the repatriation of the bodies of the three soldiers killed in Jordan.
The bodies of William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, soldiers from the American state of Georgia, were taken out one by one, in coffins covered with the American flag, from an imposing military transport plane.
The 81-year-old Democrat remained motionless in the cold wind, his hand on his heart and his gaze fixed straight ahead, as the bodies passed by.