- The U.S. military has released new footage of the January 8, 2020, Iranian missile strike on U.S. troops.
- The video footage was fired by a drone, showing the missiles hitting Al Asad air base.
- The U.S. service members who were on the ground thought they were going to die.
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The US released previously unseen video footage of the Iranian missile attack on US and coalition forces in Iraq last year.
A drone has recorded the attack as a barrage of Iranian short-range ballistic missiles carrying ammunition carrying 1,000 to 2,000 pounds at the Ashes air base on January 8, 2020.
The video footage of the attack, which had never been seen before, was released by 60 minutes on Sunday.
—Zero Blog Thirty (@ ZeroBlog30) March 1, 2021
The U.S. Central Command released a longer, more detailed video on Monday.
Just days into 2020, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to assassinate Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military officer and commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
The Iranian general was killed in an airstrike outside Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020. The airstrike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a Kata’ib Hezbollah commander. The Iranian – backed militia group has carried out deadly attacks on US military and civilian personnel in Iraq.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps struck back on January 8 and launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles at the U.S. and coalition forces at Al Asad air base and Irbil.
U.S. troops stand on the spot hit by the Iranian bombing of the Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar, Iraq.
AP Photo / Qassim Abdul-Zahra
U.S. troops who were on the ground, thought they were going to die, revealed disturbing testimonies from service members there.
After receiving intelligence that an Iranian attack was imminent, Lt. Col. Staci Coleman, commander of the 443rd Air Expeditionary Force at Al Asad Air Base, had to decide which service members would evacuate and who would be left behind to defend the base.
“I decided who would live and who would die,” Coleman recalled in her written testimony about the event.
“I honestly thought anyone left behind would perish,” she said. “I did not believe anyone would survive a ballistic missile attack and it made me feel sick and helpless.”
Major Alan Johnson, who was with Al Asad, told 60 Minutes that he had received an intelligence assessment that Iran’s intent is to level the playing field and that we may not survive.
Out of fear of the worst, he recorded a video for his family. In the heartbreaking video, he tearfully said to his 6-year-old son, “Just know in your heart that I love you. Bye mate.”
—60 minutes (@ 60 minutes) March 1, 2021
No U.S. troops were killed in the Iranian missile strike, but more than a hundred servicemen sustained traumatic brain injuries, and the combat wounds that Trump controversially claimed were “not very serious.” A total of 29 troops wounded during the attack received Purple Hearts.
Damage to the military bases that house US troops, specifically the Al Asad air base, was severe in some places. That no one was killed in the ballistic attack was a miracle.
Damage to Iraq’s Al Asad air base is seen in a satellite photo taken on January 8, 2020
Planet / Handout via REUTERS
“These things have a radius of 50 to 100 feet, and that’s just the shrapnel in the actual explosion,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said of the Iranian missiles. He described the Iranian ballistic missiles fired at US troops as “very, very significant, serious weapons”.