What he probably heard was the sound of seven 500-pound bombs hitting a compound near the border. According to the Pentagon, the compound was used by two Iraqi militias, Iraqi militants, Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada.
Before and after satellite images released by Maxar Technologies, a space technology company, clearly show how much destruction the bombs caused.
The “before” image shows a connection, just over a third of a kilometer from the Iraqi border, containing about a dozen buildings of various sizes. In the ‘after’ image, almost all the buildings were destroyed, and the dirt in and around the compound was blackened by the explosions.
It is unclear how many military people were killed. Kata’ib Hezbollah has acknowledged only one death, without specifying where he died on the Iraqi-Syrian border. A U.S. official said “up to a handful” were killed, while other reports said between 17 and 22 people were killed.
The Pentagon says the strike was intended as a US response to a series of recent rocket and mortar attacks on US and coalition positions in Iraq. On February 15, a barrage of rockets fell inside the grounds of Erbil International Airport and in residential parts of the city, killing a contractor while wounding several U.S. personnel and Iraqi civilians. The Green Zone in Baghdad, where the US embassy is located, was a regular target for mortar and rocket launchers. Kata’ib Hezbollah has repeatedly denied any involvement in these attacks, and did so again in a statement released on Friday.
Pentagon officials told CNN that the composition it was targeting was not linked to those attacks, but Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he was “confident” that it was being used by the same militias on the U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq using rocket attacks.
The armed groups allegedly using it, Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, are just two of a host of militias that became known during the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and filled the void that ‘ left an Iraqi army. it was in full refuge.
I spent a lot of time with some of these militias in 2015 and 2016 as they struggled north from Baghdad. Some were well organized and disciplined, others radical and fickle.
Their commanders were never ashamed of the support they received from Iran.
“Yes, we declare to the world, we have Iranian advisers,” Hadi Al-Amari, a senior commander of the pro-Iranian Iraqi Badr Brigades, told me in 2015 on the front lines outside the city of Tikrit, then under ISIS -control. “We are proud of them and we thank them for their participation with us.”
In the area, I came across an Iranian in combat capability who told me in broken Arabic that he was a volunteer.
One military commander told me at the time, “It is better to have four Iranian advisers at the forefront than 400 U.S. advisers sitting in the Green Zone in Baghdad.”
Since then, Iraqi militias backed by Iran have grown stronger, while relations between Washington and Tehran have deteriorated dramatically.
Now the US finds itself in a situation in which it hopes to make it clear that it will no longer tolerate attacks by Iranian-backed militias on its positions in Iraq, but at the same time wants to reopen a dialogue with Iran. It is no easy task to send that message without burning the bridges he is trying to build to Tehran.
Friday’s strike was the first known military action taken by the Biden government, making it the seventh U.S. government in a row to use military force in the Middle East.
Administrations in Washington come. Administrations in Washington go. However, some things never change.