The Department of Defense has released the identities of the three U.S. service members killed in the strike that targeted a U.S. base in Jordan.
Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia, were killed in an Iraqi militia’s strike that hit a small U.S. military outpost in Jordan, near its border with Syria, known as Tower 22.
At least 40 other service members were injured in the attack, though that total is expected to increase.
The military is looking into why the drone was not intercepted, though various outlets have reported that it was able to get through because it approached the target at the same time a U.S. drone was also returning to base. White House and Pentagon spokespeople declined to confirm the reporting publicly.
“We are still assessing what happened and how a one way attack drone was able to impact the facility,” deputy Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said. “U.S. Central Command continues to investigate this attack, and for operations security and force protection reasons, we’re not going to discuss further specifics or measures we’re taking to prevent such actions or as future attacks.”
Various Iranian-backed militias have carried out roughly 165 of these attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, and now Jordan since mid-October, though none had been fatal until this weekend. Of those, 66 occurred in Iraq, 98 in Syria, and this weekend’s deadly strike was the first one in Jordan, Singh said.
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Roughly eighty U.S. service members had been injured in previous attacks, she added, bringing the total to approximately 120.
The U.S. has infrequently carried out targeted strikes against the militias’ facilities mostly, though they have not deterred these militias from continuing to target these U.S. bases.
