WASHINGTON — US fighter jets bombed two Kata’ib Hezbollah command centers in Iraq in the predawn hours on Wednesday, the military said, in the first declared set of premeditated airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in the country in more than two years.
The strikes came in response to continuing barrages targeting bases used by US troops in Iraq and Syria as Iran-backed militias continue to issue threats over Washington’s support for Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.
The US response on Wednesday morning targeted “a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah command and control node near Al-Anbar and Jufr al-Saqr, south of Baghdad,” a defense official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The facilities, which the official said were destroyed by the strikes, were used “to support recent attacks” on US bases in the region. The Pentagon assessed that militia personnel were onsite at the time of the strikes, but it remained uncertain how many may have been killed, the official said.
