Three US service members have been killed and at least 25 others wounded in a drone attack in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border, the United States military has said.
“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,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sunday.
He said the US “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner [of] our choosing.”
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed groups, claimed attacks targeting three bases, including one on the Jordan-Syria border.
Jordan condemned on Sunday the “terrorist attack” on a military advance post just inside its border with Syria and said it was cooperating with Washington to secure its frontier.
In the first official statement on the attack, US ally Jordan said it was working with Washington to fight terrorism. Earlier, Jordanian state television quoted Muhannad Mubaidin, a spokesperson for Jordan’s government, as saying the attack happened outside of the kingdom across the border in Syria.
The deaths are the first fatalities of US troops in the Middle East since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7.
The attack comes amid soaring tensions in the region, where Israel continues its war on Gaza in response to an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel that killed at least 1,139 people, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 26,400 people, according to Palestinian officials in the besieged territory.
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