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."
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...
28 Americans Wounded or Killed in Syria over last two months.
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?
