Report: Rockets fired at facility hosting US troops in Syria

A facility housing US troops in eastern Syria came under attack late Sunday when rockets were fired from nearby areas, an opposition war monitor, state media and a spokesman for US-backed fighters said, though the US military denied there was any attack, according to The Associated Press.

“There is no truth to the reports that US forces in Syria were attacked by rockets today,” tweeted coalition spokesman Col. Wayne Marotto.

Earlier on Sunday, Siyamend Ali, a spokesman for the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said two rockets were fired at Al-Omar field in Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-Zour without inflicting any casualties.

He added that it was not immediately clear where the rockets were fired from.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rockets were fired from areas controlled by Iran-backed fighters in the area of Mayadeen, also in Deir el-Zour.

Sunday’s incident comes six days after US troops in eastern Syria came under a similar attack. That attacked followed US air strikes near the Iraq-Syria border against what the Pentagon said were facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups to support drone strikes inside Iraq.

Rocket attacks have regularly targeted Iraqi bases as well as the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, where the US embassy is located, since the US elimination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani last January.

Last week’s air strikes were not the first time that the Biden administration has retaliated for attacks on US targets in Iraq.

In February, the US bombed a border depot in Syria which the Pentagon said was used by Iran-backed Iraqi armed militia that have been tied to the rocket attacks. The strikes followed a rocket attack targeting an airbase in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, which killed a foreign civilian contractor and wounded five others, among them a US soldier.

US President Joe Biden described the February attack as a “warning” to Iran.