US President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the St. John Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina, on 28 January 2024. US President Joe Biden vowed on Sunday to strike back after a drone attack he blamed on Iran-backed militant groups killed three US troops in Jordan.
- A drone attack on a base in Jordan resulted in the death of
three American troops and injuries to more than 30. - President Biden blamed Iran-backed militants for the attack
and vowed to hold the perpetrators accountable. - This incident marks the first time American military
personnel have been killed by hostile fire in the Middle East since the
conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas began.
A drone
attack on a base in Jordan killed three American troops and wounded more than
30 on Sunday, with President Joe Biden blaming Iran-backed militants and vowing
to hold the perpetrators to account.
It is the
first time American military personnel have been killed by hostile fire in the
Middle East since the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas began, and the
incident will further raise tensions in the region and add to fears of a
broader conflict directly involving Tehran.
“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,” Biden
said in a statement, pledging to hold “all those responsible to account at
a time and in a manner of our choosing.”
Later in
the day at a South Carolina church banquet hall, the president held a moment of
silence for the US troops killed in the attack, then said: “We shall
respond.”
‘Regional
explosion’
Hamas spokesperson
Sami Abu Zuhri called the attack “a message to the American administration
that unless the killing of innocent people in Gaza stops, it may be faced with
the entire (Muslim) nation.”
Abu Zuhri said:
The continuation of the American-Zionist aggression on Gaza risks a regional explosion.
The US
Central Command (CENTCOM) said Sunday evening that the attack had hit a
logistics support base located at Tower 22, in northeast Jordan, and that it
wounded at least 34 service members, eight of whom required evacuation from the
country.
There are
around 350 US Army and Air Force personnel at the base who conduct “a
number of key support functions,” including for the international
coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group, CENTCOM said.
Jordan’s
government spokesperson Muhannad Mubaidin, after initially claiming the attack
took place in neighbouring Syria, later said it “targeted an advanced
position on the border with Syria.”
Mubaidin
condemned the attack, as did Bahrain, Egypt and Britain, whose Foreign
Secretary David Cameron called on Iran to “de-escalate in the
region.”
Growing Middle
East crisis
The
escalating Middle East conflict poses a challenge to Biden in an election year,
with various Republican politicians quick to take aim at the president over the
deadly attack, including his predecessor, Donald Trump, who described the
situation as a “consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender.”
US and
allied forces in Iraq and Syria have been targeted in more than 150 attacks
since mid-October, according to the Pentagon, and Washington has carried out
retaliatory strikes in both countries.
Many of the
attacks on US personnel have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a
loose alliance of Iran-linked armed groups that oppose US support for Israel in
the Gaza conflict.
The latest
round of the Israel-Hamas conflict began when the Palestinian militant group
carried out a shock attack on 7 October that resulted in about 1 140 deaths,
mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Following
the attack, the United States rushed military aid to Israel, which has carried
out a relentless military offensive that has killed at least 26 422 people in
Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Those
deaths have sparked widespread anger across the region and stoked violence
involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, as well as Yemen.
The Lebanon
portion of the conflict has been limited to near daily exchanges of fire
between Hezbollah and Israel, but American forces are directly involved in Iraq
and Syria, as well as in Yemen.
The United
States and Britain have both carried out strikes targeting Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi
rebels, who have carried out more than two months of attacks on shipping.
The growing
violence in multiple parts of the Middle East has raised fears of a broader
regional conflict directly involving Iran – a worst-case scenario that
Washington is desperately seeking to avoid.
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