The U.S. military shared the identities of two service members killed in an Iranian attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a U.S. military base in Jordan.
1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas were killed in the attack on July 17. Feehan was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Gonzales was assigned to 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command, Ansbach, Germany.
U.S. Central Command said they were killed defending “against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks,” but did not specify which type of attack caused the fatalities. Four other service members were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals and have since been discharged.
The military also said personnel found an unidentified body at the base, after having said a service member was missing following the attack. They are examining the remains, and an investigation into the strike is ongoing.
Iran’s attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base marks the first fatalities Iran is responsible for in the war since March, and the first since the collapse of the memorandum of understanding into a return to more aggressive U.S. strikes and Iranian counterstrikes. It also demonstrates Iran’s continued capabilities and vulnerabilities in the U.S. air defense apparatus.
“We feel very badly, but you know those great people, those great patriots are out there fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” President Donald Trump said, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday night.
Also over the weekend, CENTCOM announced another U.S. service member was killed in northern Iraq during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone.
Six American service members were killed in a drone attack in Kuwait at the Port of Shuaiba, and others were injured in the opening hours of the war. A seventh soldier died more than a week after being wounded during a March 1 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Later in March, six other service members, a KC-135 crew, were killed in a refueler crash in Iraq.
A Navy pilot was killed in a helicopter crash in early July in the Arabian Sea, which the Navy initially described as an emergency landing, and said it had “no indication the emergency was caused by hostile action.”
TRUMP SAYS US TROOP DEATHS ‘A SHAME’ BUT NECESSARY TO PREVENT IRANIAN NUKE
The U.S. military intensified its strikes against Iran in July, following continued Iranian attacks against commercial ships transiting the waterway off its coast, including the Strait of Hormuz. Sunday marked the ninth consecutive day of U.S. strikes largely aimed at destroying their capability to target ships.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
