Pages

Friday, June 16, 2023

ZeroHedge - June 13, 2023: "22 US Troops Injured In Helicopter Accident Over Syria"

Link. Stating in part:

 The Pentagon revealed late Monday that on Sunday a major helicopter accident resulted in a large group of US military personnel being injured in northeast Syria. 

While US Central Command is downplaying it as an aviation "mishap", there were twenty-two US service members injured in the incident. Importantly, US Central command confirmed in a statement that "no enemy fire was reported." 

US Army photo from Manbij, Syria.

Ten of the wounded had injuries serious enough to be evacuated to hospitals outside of the region, presumably in neighboring Iraq where US personnel have a precent in Irbil in the north.

The nearly two dozen personnel had "various degrees" of injuries, officials said. It's unclear whether the presumed crash involved one or more helicopters.

In April there had been a Department of Defense 24-hour stan-down [sic] of all aviation units after a string of deadly accidents, including two deadly mid-air helicopter collisions within a single month time frame.

[...] Sunday's incident over Syria is believed to be a mechanical failure or pilot error, according to some reports. Meanwhile, some are questioning what American troops are still doing in Syria in the first place...

At least 900 US troops (plus an unknown amount of State Dept personnel, contractors, and intelligence personnel) have occupied northeast Syria for years at this point. They control all of Syria's main oil and gas fields, which were vital for meeting the population's energy needs. 

There have been recent reports of US soldiers and the Pentagon's Kurdish SDF proxies "looting" Syrian oil, driving it across the border into Iraq. Sporadic drone and rocket attacks on US bases in Syria have resulted in dead and wounded US personnel over the past year, a trend which recently increased.

This seems like real news. One wonders how Trump's arraignment squeezed it out of wider coverage. Their nation, our oil? What? Reparations? For what?