Margarete Grumbles
A French soldier has been killed and more troops left injured after a drone strike on a base in Iraq.
A member of the armed forces ‘died for France during an attack in the Erbil region of Iraq,’ Macron posted on X, confirming the first French military death in the Middle East war that began late last month when Israel and the United States struck Iran.
The strike on the headquarters – which France shares with Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces – involved two drones.
Donald Trump earlier said the war against Iran is moving ‘very rapidly’ even as Tehran’s new leader vowed defiance in his first public message.
‘The situation with Iran is moving along very rapidly. It’s doing very well, our military is unsurpassed,’ Trump said at the White House.
‘They really are a nation of terror and hate, and they’re paying a big price right now,’ added the US leader.
His comments come as a US refuelling aircraft crashed in western Iraq, while a second plane involved in the incident landed safely.
‘One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely. This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire,’ US Central Command, which is responsible for American forces in the Middle East, said in a statement.
The KC-135 is at least the fourth US military aircraft lost during the war in the Middle East, after three F-15s were shot down by friendly fire over Kuwait.
Elsewhere today, Iran insisted it is not laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz after an expert warned unmanned naval attack drones could ‘create havoc’ along the vital waterway.
The country’s deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi said: ‘Some countries have already talked to us about passing the Strait and we have cooperated with them.’
But he issued a warning to nations which ‘joined the aggression’, arguing they should not expect to ‘benefit from safe passage’.
The country has recently claimed its arsenal of unmanned naval attack drones is ‘huge’ and BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams said today: ‘If [Iran] can continue to deploy them without being detected and destroyed, then its ability to create havoc in one of the world’s most important waterways could last for some time.’
Follow the latest updates on the US-Israel war with Iran
Source: Dailymail.co.uk | Read the Full Story…
