Drone attack kills 3 US troops in Jordan
34 others were wounded in the attack.
Three American service members were killed today after a drone attack hit their base in Jordan near the border with Syria. The strike left 34 other service members wounded, with eight of them having to be evacuated out of Jordan.
The Tower 22 base was hit by a drone on Sunday, U.S. Central Command said. The Jordanian base is very close to the southern Syrian border in northeast Jordan. It is relatively close to the al-Tanf base that the United States uses for anti-ISIS operations. Tower 22 has nearly 350 American troops from the Army and Air Force currently deployed there.
The Department of Defense has not identified the deceased service members yet. Per its policy, the names will be released 24 hours after their next of kin are informed of their deaths.
Jordan said in a statement earlier that no Jordanian personnel were wounded in the attack.
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Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose network of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias opposed to the United States, claimed credit for the attack. The U.S. has not outright accused any specific group of the strike, but in a statement President Joe Biden said that “While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”
At an event on Sunday Biden said that the U.S. “shall respond.”
The number of wounded troops was initially reported at 25, but CENTCOM later said that number had risen to 34. The eight service members evacuated out of Jordan are in stable condition, CENTCOM said; the other 26 are being checked out to see if they need any additional care.
The attack on Tower 22 is the latest in a series of drone and rocket attacks on bases run or utilized by American forces in the Middle East. The attacks started in October, shortly after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza, in response to American support of Israel. There have been more than 150 attacks since October, resulting in several injuries among U.S. troops, including multiple traumatic brain injuries. Since then the United States has targeted groups it believes are tied to the attacks, launching airstrikes and other attacks on groups in Syria and Iraq. That included an attack on Baghdad which killed a leader of one of the militias that makes up the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, who was also a leader in the Popular Mobilization Forces, a group of militias legitimized by Iraq during the fight against ISIS.
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