[Salon] Iraqi Militia Coalition Targets Israeli Port, US Troops at Syrian Gas Field

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240123/iraqi-militia-coalition-targets-israeli-port-us-troops-at-syrian-gas-field-1116329554.html

January 23, 2024

Iraqi Militia Coalition Targets Israeli Port, US Troops at Syrian Gas Field

A Shia militia-led alliance known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced Tuesday that it had attacked the port in the Israeli city of Ashdod, located on the Mediterranean coast. 

"In continuation of our approach to resisting the occupation and supporting our people in Gaza...our fighters of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq attacked on Tuesday the port of Ashdod in the occupied territories using drones," the militia coalition said in a statement.

Israeli officials and media have not commented on the attack, which purportedly took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Footage allegedly shot near Ashdod has appeared on social media showing firefighters battling a large blaze with the help of an excavator, but Sputnik has not been able to independently verify the video's authenticity.

The militia group accompanied its statement with a video showing drones taking off on route to their targets.

Separately, on Monday night, the militia coalition reported targeting a US base at Conoco - Syria's largest natural gas fields, using missiles.

"As part of resisting the US occupation in Iraq and the region and in response to the Zionist entity's massacres in Gaza, our fighters targeted US forces positioned at Conoco Base in Syria for the third time today," the militia said in a statement Tuesday.

A Sputnik Arabic correspondent in Der Ez-Zor region reported that two rocket volleys targeted the Conico Base on Monday, with explosions heard from inside the facility and plumes of smoke rising after the attack. In their aftermath, eyewitnesses reported seeing flights of US military aircraft, including helicopters, with US forces inside the base responding to the rocket attacks with artillery strikes of their own.

Monday's Conico strikes came after reports that Al-Omar - Syria's largest oil field, had also come under militia attack using drones.

This week's strikes bring the total number of militia attacks against US bases in Iraq and Syria to more than 140. At least one US contractor has been killed to date, with over 80 servicemen facing injuries of varying severity.

Iraqi militants led by Shia militia group Kata'ib Hezbollah (not to be confused with Lebanon's Hezbollah political and militia movement) ramped up attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria in mid-October, vowing to expel American forces from both countries.

The militants reportedly scored a major victory last week, with regional media reporting that US forces at Hemo, 4 km west of Qamishli Airport in northeastern Syria, were forced to evacuate the base after repeated militia attacks. The US military has not commented on the withdrawal, but independent media appears to have corroborated it.

The Pentagon has about a dozen-and-a-half major military bases in Iraq and Syria, with the latter concentrated in the energy and food-rich areas of the country's northeast and tasked with starving the country and preventing its reconstruction in the aftermath of a CIA-sponsored dirty war. Syrian authorities have repeatedly slammed the US for its illegal occupation, pointing out that American forces were never invited into the country by the internationally recognized government in Damascus. In neighboring Iraq, the government recently called on US forces to vacate the country and to end its estimated 2,500 troops' 'train, advise and assist' mission in the country.