U.S. contractor killed, 5 service members and contractor wounded in suicide drone strike in Syria

The United States launched airstrikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria on Thursday after a U.S. contractor was killed and five U.S. service members and another contractor were wounded when a suicide drone hit a coalition base in the country's northeast.

The intelligence community believes the drone to have been of Iranian origin, the Defense Department said in a statement. The U.S. retaliated with airstrikes on Iranian-linked targets in the area, which one activist group said killed fighters on the ground.

One of the radars used to detect incoming threats at the military base in Hasakah was down for maintenance at the time of the attack, according to three U.S. defense officials. It’s not clear whether this vulnerability played a role in the drone reaching a populated area on the base, the officials said. 

On Friday, another base used by the U.S. military in Syria came under rocket attack, the White House said. There were no casualties from the “totally ineffective" attack, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told NBC News.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday, “At the direction of President Biden, I authorized U.S. Central Command forces to conduct precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).