It is the first time the US has announced a strike on Iranian proxy forces in Iraq since targeting Tehran-linked sites in Syria on three occasions in recent weeks, in response to a spike in attacks on American personnel.
“We can confirm an attack last night by Iran-backed militias using a close-range ballistic missile against US and coalition forces at Al-Asad Airbase, which resulted in eight injuries and some minor damage to infrastructure,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said in a statement.
The Ain al-Asad Air Base is located in the desert of Iraq’s Western Anbar province and hosts forces of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq.
“Immediately following the attack, a US military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defence strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iranian-backed militia personnel involved in this attack. This self-defence strike resulted in several enemy KIA (killed in action),” Ryder said.
The surge in attacks on American troops is linked to the latest war between Israel and Hamas, which began on Oct 7 when fighters from the Palestinian group carried out a shock cross-border attack from Gaza that Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
Israel has responded with a relentless air, land, and sea campaign against Hamas that the Gaza health ministry says has killed more than 14,000 people, also mostly civilians.
Those deaths have sparked widespread anger across the region, and Israel’s campaign against Hamas has repeatedly been cited as justification for attacks on American personnel in Iraq and Syria that have left scores of US troops injured.
The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington that US forces “have been attacked approximately 66 times since Oct 17 – 32 separate times in Iraq and 34 separate times in Syria.”
She said the attacks have resulted in approximately 62 injuries to US personnel, but that number did not include the eight cited by Ryder.
While American forces have been targeted in both Iraq and Syria, Washington had until now only responded with strikes in Syria in an apparent bid to avoid inflaming political tensions in Iraq, which the US invaded in 2003 and where Iran wields substantial influence.
Singh said the fighters were targeted in Iraq “because the AC-130 was able to determine the point of origin from where the close-range ballistic missile was…fired to the base” and then tracked the fighters in their vehicle.
She added it was the first time such a munition had been used against US forces since the wave of attacks began on Oct17.
A source from the Hashd Al-Shabi or Popular Mobilization Forces – mainly pro-Iranian units now integrated in the regular armed forces – had earlier confirmed that a strike on a vehicle had killed one fighter and wounded three others.
The strike hit a vehicle belonging to a pro-Iranian group in a convoy travelling through Abu Ghraib, 30km west of Baghdad.
A group called “the Islamic resistance in Iraq” said on Tuesday that one of its fighters was killed, without elaborating on the circumstances and without saying if he was killed in Abu Ghraib.
His funeral was held in a Baghdad mosque on Tuesday and hundreds of fighters from the Hashd Al-Shabi attended, according to an AFP journalist.
There are roughly 2,500 American troops in Iraq and some 900 in Syria as part of efforts to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group.