After a drone attack that left one US contractor dead and five US military members injured, US airstrikes in eastern Syria killed eight pro-Iran fighters, a war monitor reported on Friday.
On behalf of President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Thursday that “precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
The IRGC is a wing of the Iranian military and is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the United States.
According to Austin, “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,”
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 Hasakeh in northeast Syria”.
