More than 100 U.S. soldiers reportedly suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iran’s January missile attack on two Iraqi bases housing U.S. personnel.
A U.S. official with knowledge of the casualties told CNN about the latest surge in known cases connected to the Jan. 8 offensive against the al Asad military base in Iraq. The number has consistently grown since President Trump initially said no service members were injured. The Pentagon announced late last month that 64 U.S. soldiers were diagnosed with mild brain injuries.
Iran attacked Iraqi air bases housing U.S. personnel in early January after the United States announced it successfully killed top Iranian military official Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite Quds Force, and a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq. The U.S. claimed Soleimani was planning future attacks that posed a threat to U.S. national security.
“Soleimani was actively planning new attacks, and he was looking very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Baghdad,” Trump said then. Sources told the Washington Examiner in the aftermath of Iran’s attacks that the soldiers did not initially exhibit symptoms of brain injuries, saying, “They seemed fine at first.”
