WASHINGTON (AP) — Two U.S. soldiers killed in Jordan by Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks were identified on Monday, the first troop deaths from direct Iranian fire since the opening days of the war.
The Defense Department said in a statement that 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, were killed in Jordan. They were deployed to support a U.S. mission against the Islamic
State group, the statement said.
The U.S. military says 17 service members have been killed in the war with Iran.
The deaths reflect the complicated reality that American soldiers don’t need to be on the ground in Iran for there to be lethal risks in a conflict that involves drones, missiles and airplanes. American forces are arrayed across the Middle East, making other nations targets of Iran and its allies as the fighting has escalated after a breakdown in peace talks.
President Donald Trump has said the war is necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Trump, a Republican, now faces political pressure to bring the war to a close and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against.
An American service member was also killed in northern Iraq on Saturday during a “controlled detonation” of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone, U.S. Central Command said Sunday. A second service member was wounded and was receiving medical treatment for a minor injury.
The military said it was withholding additional information until 24 hours after families had been notified.
Iranian authorities said U.S. strikes in just the past three weeks have killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 500 others, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday.
Both sides have targeted civilian infrastructure relied on by millions of people. Workers on ships, as well as foreign workers and others in Gulf nations, Israel and Lebanon have also died in the conflict.
Shortly after the U.S. and Israel began the war on Feb. 28, an Iranian drone strike at a civilian port in Kuwait killed six American soldiers. The soldiers were part of a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa who were working at a shipping container-style building that had no defenses.
A seventh soldier died more than a week after being wounded during a March 1 attack by Iran on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
Later in March, six service members were killed when a KC-135 refueling aircraft supporting U.S. military operations against Iran crashed in Iraq. The aircraft was in “friendly” airspace when an unspecified incident involving another aircraft took place, according to U.S. Central Command.
On Monday, the U.S. military said a Navy pilot died in a helicopter crash in the Arabian Sea. The Navy initially described the July 1 crash as an emergency landing and said there was “no indication the emergency was caused by hostile action.” The remaining three sailors aboard the helicopter were rescued.
