©Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden comments at the First South Carolina National Dinner at the State Fairgrounds in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S., January 27, 2024. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo
By Phil Stewart, Steve Holland and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three U.S. service members were killed and dozens injured in an unmanned aerial attack on U.S. forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border, President Joe Biden and U.S. officials said on Sunday.
Biden blamed Iranian-backed groups for the attack, the first deadly strike against US forces since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October, sending shock waves across the Middle East.
“While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iranian-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq,” Biden said in a statement.
At least 34 personnel were evaluated for possible traumatic brain injuries, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Two different officials said some injured American forces were medically evacuated from the base for further treatment.
A fourth official said the drone struck near the barracks, which, if confirmed, could explain the high number of casualties.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline militant groups backed by Iran, claimed attacks on three bases, including one on the Jordan-Syria border.
The attack constitutes a serious worsening of the already tense situation in the Middle East, where war broke out in Gaza after the attack by the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas on Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people. According to the local Health Ministry, the subsequent Israeli attack on Gaza killed over 26,000 Palestinians.
While the United States has so far maintained an official line that Washington is not at war in the region, it has still carried out strikes against targets of Yemen’s Houthi groups that have attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
“We will continue their commitment to fight terrorism. And have no doubt: we will hold all those responsible to account at the time and in the way of our choosing,” Biden said in his statement released by the White House.
Biden’s Republican opponents seized on the attack as evidence of the Democratic president’s failure to confront Iran as his proxies strike U.S. forces across the region.
“The only response to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iranian terrorist forces… Anything less will establish Joe Biden as a coward,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton said in a statement.
A senior official from the Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhri, directly linked the attack to the Israeli campaign in Gaza.
“The killing of three American soldiers is a message to the American administration that if it does not stop the killing of innocents in Gaza, it will have to confront the entire nation,” he told Reuters.
“The continued American-Zionist aggression in Gaza is capable of detonating the situation in the region.”
The US military said the attack occurred at a base in northeast Jordan, near the Syrian border. He did not name the base. US military activity in Jordan can be a sensitive issue, especially at a time of heightened tensions in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
A Jordanian government spokesman told state TV that the militants targeted a different base outside Jordanian territory.
Washington has given Jordan about $1 billion to strengthen border security since Syria’s civil war began in 2011, and has recently sent additional military aid to that end, Western intelligence sources say.
It is unclear which Iranian-backed group may have carried out the attack, but several U.S. officials have said they do not believe Iranian military forces themselves launched the one-way attack drone.
“While we are still gathering the facts, this is definitely the work of an Iranian-backed militia group,” another U.S. official said.