Blame game: Who bombed Iraqi fighters in Syria?
Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units fighting in Syria were targeted recently by some country's aircraft, but no one's fessing up.
An airstrike on pro-Damascus forces — including Iraqi fighters — in eastern Syria has spurred conflicting accusations about who was responsible for the attack.
The Syrian government and Iraqi militias blamed the US-led anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition for the June 17 strike on the town of al-Heri, a claim the Pentagon denied. An undisclosed US official speaking to CNN blamed Israel, while Israel still remains mum.
Syria's state news agency SANA did not give casualty figures, only reporting that "a number of martyrs" were killed. Meanwhile, Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) issued a statement June 18 that said, "US planes fired two guided missiles at a fixed [PMU] position on the border with Syria, killing 22 fighters and wounding 12."
US Army Col. Sean Ryan, the spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force fighting IS, denied June 18 that the United States was behind the strikes on PMU sites or on al-Heri, a strategic town on the Syrian border with Iraq. He warned against "misinformation.”
