Five American service members died in a helicopter crash in the eastern Mediterranean, the US military said Sunday.
It says the aircraft suffered a mishap while refuelling as part of a routine training exercise.
The US has increased its operations in the region since the outbreak of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
President Joe Biden paid tribute to the victims, saying service members were putting “their lives on the line for our country every day”.
“We pray for the families of all our fallen warriors today and every day,” he added.
The military statement did not specify where the aircraft was flying from or where the crash happened.
But the US has moved two aircraft carriers, as well as ships and jets, to the eastern Mediterranean over the past month.
The deployment reflects American concerns that the conflict between Israel and Hamas could draw in other parts of the region.
In particular, the US is eager to prevent Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement from joining the conflict.
It is backed by Iran, which also funds and arms Hamas.
Meanwhile, American aircraft on Sunday struck a weapons storage facility and a command-and-control center used by Iran-linked militants in Syria in the latest round of retaliatory strikes amid continued attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East, officials said.
“Within the last two hours, the U.S. has taken precision defensive strikes against two sites in Syria,” one official told ABC News.
The operation was in response to what the Pentagon has called ongoing attacks, injuring dozens of American troops, by proxy fighters supported by Irab since the Israel-Hamas war began after Hamas’ terror attack last month.
The U.S. military believes.the strikes are part of a larger strategy of deterrence intended to keep other groups from escalating conflict in the region, where tensions have been sharply inflamed by the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
“The President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement on Sunday.
Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, also issued a statement calling the strikes a “response” to “continued provocations by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their affiliated groups in Iraq and Syria.”
“The United States will continue to defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” the statement concluded.
The strikes were the third round of retaliation, according to the Pentagon: The military said on Wednesday that warplanes struck a weapons storage facility in eastern Syria that was being used by Iran-backed militants responsible for the dozens of drone and rocket attacks against American troops in the region over the previous three weeks.
“We hold Iran accountable for these attacks, not just the militia groups,” a senior defense official told reporters at the time.
Ten days after Hamas launched its attack on Israel, on October 7, sparking the war, Iran-backed militants began what has become a spate of near-daily aggression, U.S. officials have said.
The Iran-linked attackers “in all cases were taking shots at what they believed to be very large numbers of U.S. personnel with the intent of killing them,” a senior military official said last week.
On October 26, in the first strikes, U.S. fighter jets hit two weapons and ammunition facilities in eastern Syria that officials said were used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and affiliated groups.
“Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces. We will not let them,” Austin said then. “If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people.”
By Agencies
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