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As U.S. and allies arm Ukraine, Russia warns that losing a conventional war “can trigger a nuclear war”

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As the United States prepares to announce a new shipment of military hardware for Ukraine and Kyiv pushes its Western partners for modern battle tanks and other heavy weapons, Moscow responded Thursday with a familiar battery of threats. Once again, Russia alluded to its nuclear arsenal in a bid to dissuade the U.S. and its NATO allies from helping Ukraine resist the full-scale invasion President Vladimir Putin launched almost 11 months ago.

“It never occurs to any of the lowlifes to draw an elementary conclusion from this: The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can trigger a nuclear war,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a top Putin ally who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, said in a post on Telegram.

“Nuclear powers have not lost major conflicts on which their fate depended,” added Medvedev, whose rhetoric has grown increasingly bellicose over the course of the nearly a year-long war.


Ukrainian troops in U.S. for training on Patriot missile defense system

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When asked whether Medvedev’s eyebrow-raising statement represented an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine or Russia’s broader standoff with the West, the Kremlin’s top spokesman said Thursday that the remarks were in line with Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

“There are no contradictions there,” presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Striking an eerily similar note, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church professed in a Thursday sermon that “an attempt to destroy Russia would mean the end of the world.”

“Today there are very big threats to the world, to our country, and to the whole human race, because some crazy people had the idea that the great Russian power, possessing powerful weapons, inhabited by very strong people… who have always come out victorious, that they can be defeated,” said Patriarch Kirill, a staunch backer of all Kremlin policy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Orthodox Easter mass led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill at the Christ The Saviour Cathedral on April 24, 2022, in Moscow.

Getty


In Washington, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the latest comments were consistent with Russia’s previous statements regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

“This is not the first time that we have seen such kind of rhetoric from Russia broadly … We think provocative rhetoric regarding nuclear weapons is not only dangerous, it is reckless, adds to the risk of miscalculation and candidly it should be avoided,” Patel said. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

This week, Russian authorities put on a show of force. Putin gave orders to expand the Russian army by around 300,000 people, which would see the number of serving soldiers swell to 1.5 million over the next three years. He also ordered a new army corps and two military districts to be established near European borders.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu later laid out an ambitious plan for these changes, saying new military structures would be created around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia. The last location is right on the border with Finland, a Nordic nation that is in the process of becoming a NATO member.

“Self-sufficient” units were also to be deployed to the Ukrainian territories that Russia illegally annexed, Shogui said, despite the Russian military not fully controlling those areas.

“Ensuring the military security of the state, protection of the new federal subjects and critical facilities of the Russian Federation can only be guaranteed by strengthening the key structural components of the Armed Forces,” Shoigu said, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

The Kremlin called the planned military expansion a response to “the proxy war” it claims the West is waging against Russia in Ukraine — a claim Moscow has long wielded to justify its brutal invasion.

Some analysts have noted that the changes announced this week — especially breaking the current, single Western Military District into several smaller ones — in some ways represent a step into the past.

“Shoigu’s announcements since December have been a little surreal to see. In most cases, the posture changes are returning to the past (pre-2010 era), not a step forward,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation. “[His] statements of more billets and more divisions will need more people and equipment to populate them (even if they fall short of targets). This is a tall order to achieve by 2026 without major changes to the Russian economy and personnel system.”

On Wednesday, Putin toured a defense enterprise, the Obukhovsky Plant in St. Petersburg, which has been placed under U.S. sanctions, to praise efforts to increase the output of weaponry and heavy machinery.

Russia has lost a significant amount of equipment that has been either destroyed, captured by Ukraine or abandoned by retreating Russian soldiers over the last 11 months. Independent Russian and international media outlets have also reported in detail on the myriad cases when poorly equipped Russian soldiers ended up on the front line, pointing towards production difficulties in the country’s military-industrial complex.

Putin told workers at the plant that Russia was justified in calling Ukraine a country full of “neo-Nazis,” and he insisted that victory was “inevitable.”

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North Korea keeps up its missile barrage with launch of ICBM

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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea added to its barrage of recent weapons tests on Thursday, firing at least three missiles including an intercontinental ballistic missile that forced the Japanese government to issue evacuation alerts and temporarily halt trains.

The launches are the latest in a series of North Korean weapons tests in recent months that have raised tensions in the region. They came a day after Pyongyang fired more than 20 missiles, the most it has fired in a single day ever.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the North firing an ICBM from an area near its capital Pyongyang around 7:40 a.m. and then firing two short-range missiles an hour later from the nearby city of Kacheon that flew toward its eastern waters.

The longer-range missile appeared to be fired on a high angle, possibly to avoid entering the territory of neighbors, reaching a maximum altitude of 1,920 kilometers (1,193 miles) and traveling around 760 kilometers (472 miles), according to South Korea’s military.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the launch was successful.

Japan’s Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada announced similar flight details but said that his military lost track of the weapon after it “disappeared” in skies above waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

Choi Yong Soo, a South Korean Navy captain who handles public affairs for Seoul’s Defense Ministry, didn’t answer directly when asked whether the military believes the launch might have failed with the missile exploding in midair, saying that the test was still being analyzed.

Citing anonymous military sources, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that the missile possibly failed to maintain normal flight following a stage separation.

The Japanese government initially feared the ICBM would fly over its northern territory but later adjusted its assessment. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said the alerts were based on a trajectory analysis that indicated a flyover.

The office of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida broadcast alerts through television, radio, mobile phones and public loudspeakers to residents in the northern prefectures of Miyagi, Yamagata and Niigata, instructing them to go inside firm buildings or underground.

There have been no reports of damage or injuries from areas where the alerts were issued. Bullet train services in those regions were temporarily suspended following the missile alert before resuming shortly. Kishida condemned the North’s launches and said officials were analyzing the details of the weapons.

The office of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said his national security director Kim Sung-han discussed the launches during an emergency security meeting where members talked about plans to strength the country’s defense in conjunction with its alliance with the United States.

The office said South Korea will maintain its combined military exercises with the United States in response to North Korea’s intensifying testing activity, which it said would only deepen the North’s international isolation and unleash further economic shock on its people.

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, issued a statement saying the United States strongly condemns the North’s ICBM test and that President Joe Biden and his national security team are assessing the situation in close coordination with allies and partners.

“This launch, in addition to the launch of multiple other ballistic missiles this week, is a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions and needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region,” Watson said.

She said the United States will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and allies South Korea and Japan.

One of the more than 20 missiles North Korea shot on Wednesday flew in the direction of a populated South Korean island and landed near the rivals’ tense sea border, triggering air raid sirens and forcing residents on Ulleung island to evacuate. South Korea quickly responded by launching its own missiles in the same border area.

Those launches came hours after North Korea threatened to use nuclear weapons to get the U.S. and South Korea to “pay the most horrible price in history” in protest of ongoing South Korean-U.S. military drills that it views as a rehearsal for a potential invasion.

North Korea has been ramping up its weapons demonstrations to a record pace this year. It has fired dozens of missiles, including its first demonstration of intercontinental ballistic missiles since 2017, as it exploits the distraction created by Russia’s war in Ukraine and a pause in diplomacy to push forward arms development and dial up pressure on the United States and its Asian allies.

The North has punctuated its tests with an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes preemptive nuclear attacks over a variety of loosely defined crisis situations. U.S. and South Korean officials say North Korea may up the ante in the coming weeks with its first detonation of a nuclear test device since September 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a telephone call with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin over Wednesday’s missile launches, including the one that “recklessly and dangerously” landed near the South Korean coastline, and stressed the “ironclad” U.S. commitment to the security of its ally, according to their offices.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price also addressed concerns about possible North Korean preparations for another nuclear test, which would be its seventh overall. Experts say such tests could possibly bring North Korea a step closer to its goal of building a full-fledged arsenal threatening regional U.S. allies and the American mainland.

“Should it go forward with a seventh nuclear test there would be additional costs and consequences,” Price said, noting that the test would be a “dangerous, reckless, destabilizing act.”

North Korea last flew a missile over Japan in October in what it described as a test of a new intermediate range ballistic missile, which experts say potentially would be capable of reaching Guam, a major U.S. military hub in the Pacific. That launch forced the Japanese government to issue evacuation alerts and pause train services.

Experts say North Korea is escalating a brinkmanship aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

Nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have been stalled since early 2019 over disagreements in exchanging the release of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North and the North’s denuclearization steps.

The North has so far ignored the Biden administration’s calls for open-ended talks, insisting that Washington should first discard its “hostile” policy, a term North Korea mainly uses to describe sanctions and combined U.S.-South Korea military exercises.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Wednesday underscored that the Biden administration has repeatedly sought to reach out to North Korean officials through diplomatic channels and has made clear “we’re willing to sit down with North Korea without precondition to discuss the denuclearization of the peninsula.”

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Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo. AP writers Aamer Madhani and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to the story from Washington.

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North and South Korea exchange missile launches as tensions ratchet up even further

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Seoul, South Korea — Air raid sirens sounded on a South Korean island and residents there evacuated to underground shelters after North Korea fired at least 17 missiles Wednesday, at least one of them in its direction and landing near the rivals’ tense sea border, the South’s military said. South Korea quickly responded by launching its own missiles in the same border area.

The launches came hours after North Korea threatened to use nuclear weapons to get the U.S. and South Korea to “pay the most horrible price in history” in protest of the ongoing South Korean-U.S. military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal. The White House maintained that the United States has no hostile intent toward North Korea and vowed to work with allies to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

The North’s barrage of missile tests also came as world attention was focused on South Korea following a weekend Halloween tragedy that saw more than 150 people killed in a crowd surge in Seoul in what was the country’s largest disaster in years.

South Korea’s military said North Korea launched at least 17 missiles – all short-range ballistic weapons or suspected surface-to-air missiles – off its its eastern and western coasts on Wednesday morning. Later in the day, North Korea fired about 100 artillery shells into an eastern maritime buffer zone the Koreas created in 2018 to reduce tensions, according to South Korea’s military.

The launch of 17 missiles is a record number of daily weapons tests by North Korea in recent years.

People watch a TV news report on North Korea firing a ballistic missile off its east coast, in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 2, 2022.

KIM HONG-JI / REUTERS


One of the missiles launched by Pyongyang – a ballistic weapon – was flying toward South Korea’s Ulleung island before it eventually landed 104 miles northwest of the island. South Korea’s military subsequently issued an air raid alert on the island, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. South Korean media published photos showing island residents moving to underground shelters.

Hours later on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said it had lifted the air raid alert on the island.

That missile landed 16 miles away from the rivals’ sea border. The landing site is in international waters but far south of the extension of the nations’ sea border, off the east coast of South Korea. South Korea’s military said it was the first time a North Korean missile had landed so close to the sea border since the countries’ division in 1948.

“This is very unprecedented and we will never tolerate it,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a separate statement.

In 2010, North Korea shelled a frontline South Korean island off the peninsula’s western coast, killing four people. But the weapons used were artillery rockets, not ballistic missiles whose launches or tests are banned by multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Later Wednesday, South Korean fighter jets launched three air-to-surface, precision-guided missiles near the eastern sea border to show its determination to get tough on North Korean provocations. South Korea’s military said the missiles landed in international waters at the same distance of 16 miles north of the extension of the sea border as the North Korean missile fell earlier Wednesday.

It said it maintains a readiness to win “an overwhelming victory” against North Korea in potential clashes.

“North Korea firing missiles in a way that sets off air raid sirens appears intended to threaten South Koreans to pressure their government to change policy,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “North Korea’s expanding military capabilities and tests are worrisome, but offering concessions about alliance cooperation or nuclear recognition would make matters worse.”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff earlier identified three of the North Korean weapons launched as “short-range ballistic missiles” fired from the North’s eastern coastal town of Wonsan, including the one that landed near the sea border.

North Korean short-range weapons are designed to strike key facilities in South Korea, including U.S. military bases there.

In an emergency meeting with top security officials, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered officials to take swift unspecified steps to make North Korea face consequences for its provocation. He said he would consider the North Korean missile’s landing near the border “a virtual violation of (our) territorial waters.”

During the emergency South Korean meeting, “participants lamented the provocations committed during our national mourning period and pointed out that this clearly showed the nature of the North Korean government,” according to South Korea’s presidential office.

Earlier Wednesday, Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters that at least two ballistic missiles fired by North Korea showed a possibly “irregular” trajectory. This suggests the missiles are the North’s highly maneuverable, nuclear-capable KN-23 missile, which was modeled on Russia’s Iskander missile.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called North Korea’s continuing missile tests “absolutely impermissible.”

U.S. and South Korean officials tell CBS News North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is preparing to carry out an atomic test soon as it continues to develop a tactical nuclear weapon. A nuclear test would signal that Kim has managed to grow his weapons program through the Trump and Biden administrations and despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We think they’re ready to go. Kim just has to give the thumbs up,” a senior U.S. State Department official told CBS News. 

A tactical nuclear device is designed to potentially be used on a battlefield. 

Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea said the danger of armed clashes between the Koreas off their western or eastern coasts is increasing. He said South Korea needs to make “proportional responses” to North Korean provocations, not “overwhelming responses,” to prevent tensions from spiraling out of control and possibly leading the North to use its tactical nuclear weapons.

Animosities on the Korean Peninsula have been running high in recent months, with North Korea testing a string of nuclear-capable missiles and adopting a law authorizing the preemptive use of its nuclear weapons in a broad range of situations. Some experts still doubt North Korea would use nuclear weapons first in the face of U.S. and South Korean forces.

North Korea has argued its recent weapons tests were meant to issue a warning to Washington and Seoul over their series of joint military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal, including this week’s exercises involving about 240 warplanes.

In a statement released early Wednesday, Pak Jong Chon, a secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party who’s considered a close confidant of leader Kim, called the so-called Vigilant Storm air force drills “aggressive and provocative.”

“If the U.S. and South Korea attempt to use armed forces against (North Korea) without any fear, the special means of the (North’s) armed forces will carry out their strategic mission without delay,” Pak said, in an apparent reference to his country’s nuclear weapons.

“The U.S. and South Korea will have to face a terrible case and pay the most horrible price in history,” he said.

U.S. and South Korean officials have steadfastly said their drills are defensive in nature and that they have no intentions of attacking North Korea.

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US

4 Marines die in NATO drill in Norway

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Four U.S. Marines were killed when their Osprey aircraft crashed in a Norwegian town in the Arctic Circle during a NATO exercise unrelated to the Ukraine war, authorities said Saturday.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere tweeted that they died in the crash on Friday night. The cause was under investigation, but Norwegian police reported bad weather in the area.

“It is with great sadness we have recived the message that four American soldiers died in a plane crash last night,” the Norwegian prime minister tweeted. “Our deepest sympathies go to the soldiers’ families, relatives and fellow soldiers in their unit.”  

The Marines, assigned to 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, II Marine Expeditionary Force, were taking part in a NATO exercise called Cold Response. The U.S. says their identities wouldn’t be immediately provided in keeping with U.S. Defense Department policy of notifying relatives.

The aircraft was an MV-22B Osprey. It “had a crew of four and was out on a training mission in Nordland County” in northern Norway, the country’s armed forces said in a statement.

It was on its way north to Bodoe, where it was scheduled to land just before 6 p.m. Friday. The Osprey crashed in Graetaedalen in Beiarn, south of Bodoe. Police said a search and rescue mission was launched immediately. At 1:30 a.m. Saturday, the police arrived at the scene and confirmed that the crew of four had died.

The annual NATO drills in Norway are unrelated to the war in Ukraine. This year they include around 30,000 troops, 220 aircraft and 50 vessels from 27 countries. The exercises began on March 14 and end on April 1.

The V-22 Ospreys have been involved in a number of deadly crashes in recent years. In 2017, three U.S. Marines were killed when a MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft crashed off the coast of Australia. 

In April of 2000, a V-22 Marine tilt-rotor Osprey crashed during a night landing in Arizona. The horrific fireball was recorded by a camera on a second V-22. Nineteen people on board were killed. 

Caroline Linton contributed to this report.



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World

Russian warship chases off U.S. submarine near Pacific islands, Moscow says

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A Russian anti-submarine destroyer chased off a U.S. submarine near the Kuril Islands, forcing it to leave the country’s territorial waters, Moscow said Saturday, amid raging tensions over Ukraine.

A Pentagon spokesman, asked by AFP for comment, said only: “We are aware of press reporting about an alleged naval incident in the Pacific. We cannot confirm the details of these reports at this time.”

A senior administration official said Saturday they had no additional information about the alleged incident.

The Russian defense ministry said that during planned military drills the Marshal Shaposhnikov destroyer detected a U.S. Navy Virginia-class submarine in Russian territorial waters near the Kuril Islands in the northern Pacific.

When the submarine ignored demands to surface, the crew of the frigate “used appropriate means” and the U.S. submarine left at full speed, the ministry said, without providing further details.

The ministry also said it had summoned the U.S. defense attaché in Moscow over the incident.

“In connection with the violation by the U.S. Navy submarine of the state border of the Russian Federation, the defense attaché at the U.S. embassy in Moscow was summoned to the Russian defense ministry,” the defense ministry said.

The Kurils, which lie north of Japan’s Hokkaido island, have been controlled by Moscow since they were seized by Soviet troops in the waning days of World War II. The incident took place near the Kuril island of Urup.

It came amid soaring tensions between Russia and the West that have seen Moscow surround Ukraine on three sides with more than 100,000 troops, with Washington warning that an all-out invasion could begin “any day.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday condemned the claims as a “provocation.”

U.S. President Joe Biden warned Putin Saturday that the United States will “respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs” should Russia invade Ukraine. The warning comes as U.S. officials say a Russian invasion could begin “at any time.”

With an escalated Russian military buildup on the borders of Ukraine, Mr. Biden emphasized on a phone call with Putin that an invasion “would produce widespread human suffering and diminish Russia’s standing.”

The U.S. State Department has ordered non-emergency employees to leave the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine.  

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World

Biden vows revenge for Kabul attack that killed 13 U.S. service members

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Washington — Thirteen U.S. service members were killed and more than a dozen others injured in an attack outside the airport in the capital of Afghanistan on Thursday, opening a deadly new chapter in the massive U.S. effort to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies ahead of President Biden’s August 31 deadline to withdraw.

The Pentagon said a suicide bomber detonated an explosion that tore through a crowd waiting at an entrance to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, where thousands of people have gathered every day since the city fell to the Taliban, desperate to board flights out of the country. Another explosion struck a nearby hotel, the Pentagon said. 

The total death toll stood at 90 people as of Thursday evening, with 150 more wounded, an Afghan official said. The tally was expected to climb.

At the remarks at the White House later in the day, the president said the bombings were the work of fighters from the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan, known as ISIS Khorasan, or ISIS-K. The attacks marked one of the single deadliest days for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in the 20 years since the allied invasion.

Mr. Biden mourned the loss of the U.S. service members, while vowing to retaliate against those who orchestrated the attacks and continue the process of withdrawing from the capital. The U.S. has helped more than 100,000 people leave Afghanistan since August 14, according to the White House.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Mr. Biden said. “Our mission will go on. America will not be intimidated.”

A Taliban spokesman condemned the “gruesome incident” and said the group “will take every step to bring the culprits to justice.” The militant group has controlled the capital since the fall of the Afghan government nearly three weeks ago and is responsible for security around the airport.

President Biden delivers remarks on the terror attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26, 2021.

Evan Vucci / AP


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U.S. airstrikes target Iran-backed militias in Syria in Biden’s 1st military action

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The U.S. on Thursday conducted its first military action under President Biden, targeting infrastructure used by Iranian-backed militant groups in Syria in response to recent rocket attacks in Iraq. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters traveling with him that he had recommended the strike to Mr. Biden, who authorized it in a phone call on Thursday morning.

“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American coalition personnel,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement. Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria for years, most recently in a rocket attack on the northern Iraqi city of Erbil last week that wounded four American contractors and one military service member. 

The strikes destroyed multiple facilities at a border control point in al Bukamal, Syria, used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada, according to Kirby.

The Pentagon spokesman did not mention any casualties, but U.K.-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that 22 people were killed in the strikes, which it said had hit three trucks carrying munitions from Iraq into Syria. 

The organization, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria and generally provides reliable information, said all of those killed were believed to have been members of the Iran-backed militias, the majority of them from Kataib Hezbollah. The Observatory said the death toll was likely to rise as some of the wounded were in serious condition. The group’s sources said that immediately after the strikes, the Iranian-backed groups rushed to evacuate several sites in al Bukamal, fearing further U.S. attacks.

Carefully chosen target

In the first military strike of his presidency, Mr. Biden approved a target along the Syria-Iraq border that would serve as payback for Iran putting U.S. personnel in harm’s way — but stop short of further escalating tension with Tehran as he tries to draw the Islamic Republic back into the crumbling 2015 nuclear deal. 


Iran restricting U.N. nuclear inspectors

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An administration official confirmed that the Biden team had selected the targets as part of a calibrated response meant to meant to achieve three things: Send a signal to Iran that the new U.S. president would not tolerate rocket attacks that put U.S. personnel in harm’s way; avoid angering U.S. partners in Iraq who need to keep good relations with both Tehran and Washington, and avoid provoking Iran to retaliate further.

Two former Trump administration officials told CBS News that the al Bukamal area has been a target of scores of Israeli strikes in recent months because it is serves as a transhipment point for the Iranian-backed Shiite militias in both Syria and Iraq. Both officials approvingly acknowledged the selection of the location. 

One of the former officials said, “it is easier to send messages there as we’re less exposed.”


Sullivan: Biden ready for Iran talks, vows re…

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The Biden administration’s strike against Iranian-backed militias follows on the heels of its first diplomatic outreach to Iran regarding American hostages in the country, as well as its public offer made via European diplomats to restart talks on Tehran’s nuclear program. Both of those diplomatic initiatives were made last week.

Last week, a rocket attack in Erbil, northern Iraq, killed one contractor, who was not an American citizen, and injured four American contractors and one American service member. A total of eight contractors were injured, two seriously enough to require evacuation. 


Shining a light on Syria’s civil war

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The United States had evidence that the attack was conducted with Iranian-supplied equipment. The attack on Erbil consisted of 14 rockets, with six more left on the launcher rails. 

The most recent airstrike against Iranian-backed militias was in December 2019, which hit targets in both Iraq and Syria. There was no immediate response from Iranian officials to Thursday’s U.S. strike. 

Eleanor Watson and Tucker Reals contributed reporting.

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