U.S. military death toll in Iran war rises to 17
CENTCOM said one service member died in Iraq as Al Jazeera reported 17 U.S. personnel killed and thousands of Iranian casualties since February.
By Lucas Ferreira · Science & Environment Writer
3 min read
The U.S. military death toll in the Iran war has risen to 17, according to Al Jazeera, after U.S. Central Command said a service member died in northern Iraq during work on a downed Iranian drone. The deaths have added pressure on Washington as the United States and Iran trade new attacks during a fragile negotiating period.
CENTCOM said the soldier was killed Saturday during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from what it described as an Iranian attack drone. Al Jazeera reported that at least 420 U.S. personnel have been wounded since the war began, with at least one service member missing.
Al Jazeera said the conflict started on Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran and Tehran responded by striking U.S. military assets in the Gulf. Before a June 17 memorandum of understanding extended a ceasefire and kept peace talks open, the U.S. military had confirmed 13 combat-related deaths across the region, Al Jazeera reported.
Those earlier deaths included six aircrew killed when a U.S. refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq in March, according to the Defense Department. Al Jazeera also reported that one service member died in Kuwait in what the military called a health-related incident.
The latest round of fighting began July 7, according to Al Jazeera. The United States said Sunday night it had completed a ninth straight night of attacks on Iran, while Iran fired ballistic missiles that struck U.S. transport planes at Aqaba airport in Jordan, Al Jazeera reported.
The U.S. military said two service members died in Jordan and a third was missing in action, according to Al Jazeera. CENTCOM also said unidentified remains had been found at the site of a Friday attack and that efforts to verify them were under way.
The Defense Department identified two of the recently killed personnel as Tyler James Feehan, 25, who died Saturday, and Isabella Gonzales, 19, who died Friday during an attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, according to Al Jazeera. The military said the incident was under investigation.
The department previously named six Air Force personnel killed in the Iraq refueling incident: John Klinner, 33; Ariana Savino, 31; Ashley Pruitt, 34; Seth Koval, 38; Curtis Angst, 30; and Tyler Simmons, 28. It also identified Cody Khork, Noah Tietjens, Nicole Amor, Declan Coady, Jeffrey O’Brien and Robert Marzan as killed in a March 1 attack at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, and Benjamin Pennington as dying from wounds suffered in an attack at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
President Donald Trump called the deaths in Jordan “a very sad thing” and said the United States would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, according to Al Jazeera. He later told reporters that U.S. forces had hit Iran “very hard” to honor killed service members.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted late last month found that about one in four Americans said Trump’s war with Iran was worth its costs, according to Al Jazeera. Most respondents were worried about economic and security consequences, Al Jazeera reported.
Iran’s Health Ministry said July 18 that U.S. strikes in July had killed at least 50 people and injured at least 500, according to Al Jazeera. From the start of the war through the June memorandum, at least 3,468 people were killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and more than 26,500 were wounded, Al Jazeera reported, citing figures that included women, children and infants.
Al Jazeera reported that senior Iranian figures killed during the war include Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, senior security chief Ali Larijani, Basij paramilitary commander Gholamreza Soleimani and several other commanders.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.