The Pentagon has declassified never-before-seen drone footage displaying a barrage of Iranian missiles pounding an American airbase in Iraq final 12 months, launched in response to the US kill strike on Iranian Normal Qassem Soleimani.
US Central Command launched the declassified footage to CBS for a ‘60 Minutes’ section over the weekend, by which six Qiam 1 missiles are seen raining down on the Ayn al-Asad airbase, which homes US troops in Iraq’s western Anbar Province.
Filmed in grainy infrared, the temporary annotated video reveals incoming missiles as they slam into plane upkeep hangars and different base services, detonating and sending black columns of smoke into the sky.
The footage was captured on January eight, 2020 by an American drone buzzing over the bottom, some 5 days after Soleimani was killed in a US air raid close to the Baghdad airport, ordered by then-president Donald Trump.
In complete, no less than 11 Qaim missiles have been fired at Ayn al-Asad within the Iranian counterattack, in line with the protection secretary on the time, Mark Esper – although CBS’s reporting put the determine at 16, stating that a number of projectiles had misfired. Whereas no US troops have been killed within the strikes, 110 servicemembers have been in the end identified with traumatic mind accidents on account of their shut proximity to the blasts.
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Whereas US navy officers have since praised American intelligence for alerting them to an impending assault and permitting an evacuation of plane and different belongings beforehand, Iraq’s then-prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi famous that Iran itself despatched advance warning to Baghdad, which was relayed to Washington. The Iranian management has additionally argued the strikes have been supposed as a present of power, moderately than to inflict casualties, within the wake of the Soleimani assassination.
Authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan famous that no less than two short-range missiles focused Erbil Worldwide Airport, which additionally homes US troops, within the January eight strikes. The identical base in Erbil was hit in a rocket assault extra just lately, prompting retaliatory air strikes from Washington. One of many Iraqi militia teams blamed for the assault, Kataib Hezbollah, has denied any involvement within the incident, nonetheless.
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