US airstrikes hit ‘more than 85 targets’ in Iraq and Syria in response to deadly Jordan attack – live | Joe Biden

Six Iranian-backed militia members have been killed and four others injured as a result of airstrikes on Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

At least three of those killed were of non-Syrian nationality, the group said.

The White House has released a statement from Joe Biden following the news that the US launched airstrikes against targets in Syria and Iraq in response to Sunday’s drone attack on a US military base that killed three soldiers.

The statement reads:

This afternoon, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces.

Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing.

The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond.

US Central Command has said its forces conducted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups.

The airstrikes were carried out at 4pm eastern time on Friday, it said.

It said US military forces struck more than 85 targets including “command and control operations, centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aired vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities” belonging to militia groups and their IRGC sponsors.

The US had warned it will carry out a series of reprisal strikes launched over more than one day in response to the drone strike over the weekend.

The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, did not specify the timing or precise location of strikes during Pentagon press conference on Thursday, but said:

We will have a multi-tier response and we have the ability to respond a number of times depending on the situation … We look to hold the people responsible for this accountable and we also seek to take away capability as we go forward.

Austin insisted that a lot of thought in Washington had gone into ensuring that the US response did not trigger a major escalation.

The secretary of defense stressed the US was not at war with Iran and Washington did not know if Tehran was aware of the specific drone strikes on Sunday mounted by what he described as the axis of resistance.

The US launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias, in an opening salvo of retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US service members in Jordan last weekend, officials have told Associated Press.

The initial strikes by manned and unmanned aircraft were hitting command and control headquarters, ammunition storage and other facilities, according to AP.

US officials have told Reuters that the strikes targeted facilities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the militias it backs.

The US has begun a wave of retaliatory airstrikes targeting militants in Iraq and Syria, according to reports, in response to a drone attack in northern Jordan which killed three American service personnel and wounded dozens more.

The strikes, reported by Associated Press and Reuters, come as Joe Biden joined grieving families at Dover air force base in Delaware on Friday as they honored the three US military personnel killed in the drone attack in Jordan last weekend.

The attack on Tower 22 was the first deadly strike against US troops since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.

Responsibility was claimed by the Iranian-backed umbrella group Islamic Resistance, and the US has made no attempt to disguise its belief that Iran was ultimately responsible. Tehran has insisted it had nothing to do with the attack.

Biden told reporters earlier this week that he held Iran responsible “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons” to Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful member of the Islamic Resistance group. However, the president added:

I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for.