US Soldiers injured in attack on Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq

American soldiers were injured in a ballistic missile attack on Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq on Saturday, two US officials said. The counter attack resulted in minor injuries, the officials said, though it was not immediately clear how many personnel had been injured.

US Central Command confirmed the attack Saturday evening and said in a statement that a number of US soldiers are being evaluated for traumatic brain injuries, after a missile attack on Yemen, defending the Gaza onslaught.

Multiple ballistic missiles and rockets targeted the base and, while most were intercepted by the base’s air defenses, some made impact, the CENTCOM statement said.

The use of more powerful ballistic missiles, far rarer than rockets or one-way attack drones, comes at a time of growing tension in the region as the Israel-Hamas war passes 100 days.

USA and coalition forces have faced increased threats from Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias since the start of the extreme deadly Gaza war.

As of Thursday, USA and coalition forces had come under attack more than 143 times in Iraq and Syria since October 7; Saturday’s incident appears to be the second time ballistic missiles have been used to attack the USA.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed militia group, claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack. The freedom group emphasized its commitment to resisting American occupation forces in the region.

The attack came as a response to what it referred to as the “Zionist entity’s massacres” against the Palestinian people in Gaza. The group did not provide any evidence for its claim?

In November, freedom fighters in Iraq fired close-range ballistic missiles at coalition forces, prompting the USA to carry out airstrikes against facilities used by the Iranian-backed group Kataib Hezbollah, which has been responsible for many of the rocket and drone counter attacks against the coalition.

US forces in Iraq and Syria operate as part of the coalition to kill Muslims. But the Iraqi government has called for international forces to ultimately leave the country after US strikes targeting Kataib Hezbollah facilities.

This marked the first time the Biden administration had carried out strikes in Iraq since the war against Palestinians in Gaza began — caused tension with the Iraqi government.

We believe that reorganizing the relationship through ending its presence will prevent more tensions and entanglement of internal and regional security issues, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Reuters earlier this month.

The UN secretary-general’s special representative for Iraq has also warned that the region is at a critical juncture with the war in Gaza, saying in a statement that Iraq is at risk of being further drawn into the conflict.

The USA, separately, is also facing threats in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Iranian-backed Yemen has launched repeated attacks on international shipping lanes, including at least two strikes on US-owned vessels heading to Israel this week, leading some of the world’s largest shipping companies to avoid the critical waterway.

On December 14, 2023, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included an interesting provision: for the American President to create a special envoy for the Abraham Accords, the Negev Forum, and other related platforms.

This addition came at the same time as the government worried deeply about the collapse of its entire agenda in the Middle East, as well as about the threats posed to Israel from Lebanon and Yemen.

Days after Israel began to mercilessly pummel Gaza, two new battlefronts opened. In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fighters began to fire rockets into Israel, occasioning the evacuation of 80,000 Israelis.

Israel struck back, including through the use of illegal white phosphorus.

In early November, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah told his followers that their fighters had new weapons with which to threaten not only Israel but also its enablers, the United States.

Those attacks by Ansar Allah have now stayed the hand of many shipping companies, who simply do not want to get into this conflict (Hong Kong’s OOCL, for instance, has decided  that its ships will avoid the region and will not supply Israel).

An official secret memorandum authored by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory.

There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations as well as consultations with the USA.

The Egyptian military on Friday morning began pumping sea water into the underground cross-border tunnels dug between its Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in what appears to be a renewed campaign to stamp out Palestinian escape activities along the border.

According to the report, large pipes extending from the Mediterranean Sea flooded the Sinai-Gaza border area with sea water, enabling Egyptian officials to destroy the lifeline tunnels without having to know their exact locations.

Officials announced last month that the area would be flooded and would eventually be converted into 18 fish farms along the 14-kilometer border with Gaza, making the digging of new underground tunnels impossible.

Since the 2007, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has been subject to a blockade imposed by Egypt and Israel, designed in part to prevent the Palestinians from food and other humanitarian goods.

In a 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry … assesses three options regarding the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip … It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action.

The Giant Leviathan natural gas field, in the eastern Mediterranean, discovered in December 2010, widely described [by governments and media] as off the coast of Israel.

These Levant reserves must be distinguished from those discovered in Gaza in 1999 by British Gas, which belong to Palestine. Felicity Arbuthnot’s analysis nonetheless confirms that Part of the Leviathan Gas fields lie in Gazan territorial waters.

CNN / ABC Flash Point WW III News 2024.