Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan was mistaken for a US drone, preliminary report suggests

US military may have mistaken an enemy drone for an American one and allowed it to enter a desert facility in Jordan, killing three US personnel and injuring scores more, authorities said Monday.

Details of the Sunday assault surfaced as President Joe Biden faced a tough balancing act, condemning Iran but wanting to respond forcefully without escalating the Gaza conflict.

According to a preliminary report quoted by two officials who were not authorised to talk and insisted on anonymity, a US drone was returning to the tiny site known as Tower 22 when the hostile drone flew in at a low height.

As a result, there was no attempt to fire down the hostile drone that had struck the outpost. One of the trailers where troops sleep took the brunt of the hit, while nearby trailers suffered minor damage from the blast and flying debris. Tower 22 lacks significant air defence systems, although it does feature counter-drone systems, such as Coyote drone interceptors.

Aside from the soldiers slain, the Pentagon reported that more than 40 personnel were injured in the incident, the majority of whom suffered cuts, bruises, head damage, and other similar traumas. Eight people were medically evacuated, three of them were heading to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany. The remaining five, who sustained “minor traumatic brain injuries,” were expected to return to duty.

Asked if the failure to shoot down the enemy drone was “human error,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh responded that the US Central Command was still assessing the matter.

The Pentagon identified those killed in the attack as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia.

The three US Army Reserve soldiers were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade in Fort Moore, Georgia.

The explanation for how the enemy drone evaded US air defenses came as the White House said Monday it’s not looking for war with Iran even as Biden vows retaliatory action. The Democratic administration believes Tehran was behind the strike.

Biden met with national security advisers in the White House Situation Room to discuss the latest developments and potential retaliation.

“There’s no easy answer here,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “And that’s why the president is meeting with his national security team weighing the options before him.”

The brazen attack, which the Biden administration blames on Iranian-based proxies, adds another layer of complexity to an already tense Mideast situation as the Biden administration tries to keep the Israel-Hamas war from expanding into a broader regional conflict.

“The president and I will not tolerate attacks on US forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the US and our troops,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said as he met at the Pentagon with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The drone attack was one of dozens on US troops in the Middle East since Hamas launched attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, igniting the war in Gaza. But it’s the first in which American service members have been killed.

Biden promised on Sunday to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing” but said the US wasn’t seeking to get into another conflict in the Middle East.

Kirby also made clear that American patience has worn thin after more than two months of attacks by Iranian proxies on US troops in Iraq, Syria and Jordan and on US Navy and commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The proxy groups — including Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iraq based Kataeb Hezbollah — say the attacks are in response to Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.

“We are not looking for a war with Iran,” Kirby told reporters. “That said, this was a very serious attack. It had lethal consequences. We will respond, and we respond appropriately.”

Iran on Monday denied it was behind the Jordan strike.

“These claims are made with specific political goals to reverse the realities of the region,” Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying. Iran regularly denies involvement in attacks linked back to it through the militias it arms across the wider Mideast.

Kirby said that US officials are still working through determining which militant group was behind the attack. He noted that Iran has longed equipped and trained the militias.

Republicans have laid blame on Biden for doing too little to deter Iranian militias, which have carried out approximately 165 attacks on US troops in the region since the start of the war.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday called the attack “yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender.”

The attack hit a US military desert outpost in the far reaches of northeastern Jordan known as Tower 22. The installation sits near the demilitarized zone on the border between Jordan and Syria along a sandy, bulldozed berm marking the DMZ’s southern edge. The Iraqi border is only 10 kilometers (6 miles) away.

The base began as a Jordanian outpost watching the border, then saw an increased US presence after American forces entered Syria in late 2015. The small installation includes US engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops, with about 350 US Army and Air Force personnel deployed.

Iraq’s government condemned the drone strike. Spokesman Bassem al-Awadi said in a statement that Iraq was “monitoring with a great concern the alarming security developments in the region” and called for “an end to the cycle of violence.” The statement said that Iraq is ready to participate in diplomatic efforts to prevent further escalation.

An umbrella group for Iran-backed factions known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of attacks against bases housing US troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began. On Sunday, the group claimed three drone attacks against sites in Syria, including near the border with Jordan, and one inside of “occupied Palestine” but so far hasn’t claimed the attack in Jordan.

John Bolton, who served as national security adviser to Trump, said Iran hasn’t paid a price for the havoc that its proxies have unleashed in the region. He suggested the Biden administration could send a strong message to Tehran with strikes on Iranian vessels in the Red Sea, Iranian air defenses along the Iraqi border, and bases that have been used to train and supply militant groups for years.

“So until Iran bears a cost, you’re not going to reestablish deterrence, you’re not going to put the belligerence on a downward slope.”

The attack came as US officials were seeing signs of progress in negotiations to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to release the more than 100 remaining hostages being held in Gaza in exchange for an extended pause in fighting. While contours of a deal under consideration would not end the war, Americans believed that it could lay the groundwork for a durable resolution to the conflict.

Qatar’s prime minister said Monday that senior US and Mideast mediators had achieved a framework proposal to present to Hamas for freeing hostages and pausing fighting in Gaza.

Prime Minister Mohammed al-Thani’s comments at the Atlantic Council in Washington came after talks Sunday in Paris among US, Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials seeking a new round of hostage releases and a cease-fire in Gaza.