The US Central Command (CENTCOM) has said "a number of American personnel were undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injuries” after massive missile strike by Iraqi anti-terror groups on Ain al-Asad airbase.
CENTCOM confirmed in a statement that the airbase in western province of Anbar was targeted by "multiple ballistic missiles and rockets," but declined to provide details on the extent of injuries.
Earlier, Iraqi reports said a barrage of forty missiles targeted the airbase on Saturday evening.
Meanwhile, citing an unnamed US official, the Reuters news agency said on Sunday that the American military personnel targeted in the rocket attack suffered what was described as “minor” injuries.
The official added that a member of Iraq’s security forces was also wounded in the attack on Ain al-Asad airbase, which houses US occupation forces in Iraq’s Anbar Province.
In a statement on its Telegram channel, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of anti-terror Iraqi armed groups, claimed responsibility for the attack on the Ain al-Asad airbase on Saturday evening.
Stressing that the base was targeted by a large number of missiles and rockets “directly hit their targets,” the statement said the large-scale rocket attack was carried out in retaliation for unflinching US support of Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Since mid-October, Iraqi resistance forces have carried out dozens of strikes on the US military facilities in both Iraq and Syria amid growing anti-US sentiments in the region over Washington’s backing of Israel's incessant bombardment campaign on Gaza.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance groups of Hamas and Islamic Jihad conducted the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the aggression, Israel has killed more than 24,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
The United States has supplied Israel with weapons and intelligence support, and blocked UN resolutions calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.