Attacks using Shahed drones have been carried out by militias in the Middle East and Russia in Ukraine
After an estimated 165 attacks on US bases in the Middle East since 7 October, it was inevitable one would eventually get through. For the first time, it is believed, US troops were killed from the air by an enemy drone: three US army reservists died and more than 80 were wounded in last weekend’s attack on Tower 22, a little-known logistics base near Jordan’s border with Syria.
The attack, the Pentagon said, had “the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah”, an Iran-aligned militia in Iraq. Joe Biden, the US president, added that he held Tehran responsible “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons” – the fast proliferating, relatively cheap drones that are changing the nature of warfare.
