Illustrative image.
A salvo of rockets launched early on July 27 hit a United States military base located within the Conoco gas plant in the eastern Syrian governorate of Deir Ezzor.
“Three missiles landed in the territory of the base at Conoco, the other two in the vicinity of the base. U.S. helicopters took to the air after the shelling,” a Syrian military source told the Sputnik news agency.
Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV said that a U.S. strike targeted the al-Jorah neighborhood near the government-controlled Deir Ezzor city after the rocket attack. No casualties were reported as a result of the rocket attack or the American retaliatory strike.
The attack came less than 24 hours after rockets were fired at the Ain al-Asad Air Base in the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar, where U.S. forces are deployed.
Following the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip, dozens of rockets and suicide drones targeted U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, claiming responsibility for most of these attacks.
The group suspended attacks against U.S. forces around five months ago after the death of three American troops in a drone strike on a base in Jordan, reportedly upon a request from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to facilitate talks on the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. However, it escalated attacks against Israel.
The recent attacks on Ain al-Asad and Conoco were likely a warning by the IRI to the U.S., who has been stalling talks on winding down its military presence in Iraq and refusing all calls to pull out from Syria.
Earlier this week, a military summit was held in Washington where Iraqi and U.S. officials discussed winding down the coalition’s work. No major announcement was made at the end of the talks, though American and Iraqi sources say an announcement that it will begin to gradually wind down is likely in the coming weeks.
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