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34 US troops injured in recent Iranian strike: Pentagon
WASHINGTON, Jan 25, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Nearly three dozen US troops suffered
traumatic brain injuries or concussion in this month’s Iranian air strike on
a military base in Iraq, the Pentagon said on Friday.
“Thirty-four total members have been diagnosed with concussions and TBI
(traumatic brain injury),” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told
reporters.
President Donald Trump had initially said that no Americans were injured in
the strike on the Ain al-Asad base in western Iraq on the night of January 7-
8 although authorities later reported that 11 troops were injured.
Hoffman said that 17 of the victims had been initially transferred to
Germany to receive treatment, eight of whom arrived back in the US on Friday.
“They will continue to receive treatment in the United States, either at
Walter Reed (military hospital near Washington) or at their home bases,” he
told a press conference at the Pentagon.
The nine other victims who were flown to Germany “are still undergoing
evaluation and treatment there,” he added.
Seventeen other troops who were treated in the region have returned to duty
in Iraq.
The airbase — one of the largest in Iraq, with 1,500 US troops making up
the bulk of a coalition presence directly adjacent to thousands of Iraqi
forces — was targeted in retaliation for the US killing of top Iranian
general Qasem Soleimani in a January 3 drone strike in Baghdad.
Democratic lawmakers seized on the announcement to accuse Trump of lying
about the strike.
“Though he downplays these injuries as ‘headaches,’ roughly half of all
TBIs require surgery and can lead to lifelong disabilities,” said
congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the Ranking Member of the Armed Services
Committee, called TBI “a serious matter.”
“It is not a ‘headache,’ and it’s plain wrong for President Trump to
diminish their wounds. … He owes them an apology,” Reed said.
At a rally in New Hampshire, Joe Biden, a frontrunner to challenge Trump in
this year’s election, said the president “brushed off” the troops’ injuries.
“I find it, quite frankly, disgusting,” Biden, a former vice president,
said.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1144 hrs