The US military said it carried out precision air strikes in eastern Syria on Thursday in response to a drone attack that killed one American contractor and injured five US service personnel.
A Department of Defense statement said the US contractor had been killed and the others wounded “after a one-way unmanned aerial vehicle struck a maintenance facility on a Coalition base near Hasakah in northeast Syria.”
US Carries Out Syria Strikes After Contractor Killed
Another US contractor was also injured in the UAV attack, the Pentagon said.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he had authorized “precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”
“The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against Coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC,” he added.
The US intelligence community “assess the UAV to be of Iranian origin,” the Pentagon statement said.