U.S. Conducts Retaliation Airstrike After Iranian Drone Kills U.S. Contractor in Syria

The U.S. military carried out several precision airstrikes in Syria on Thursday, reportedly killing eight Iranians, in retaliation for a drone strike Iranian forces conducted earlier in the day on a coalition base that killed one American. The Defense Department said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps crashed a UAV into a building near Hasakah in northeast Syria at approximately 1:38 p.m. local time, leaving one U.S. contractor dead. The attack also wounded five U.S. service members and another U.S. contractor.According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, two of the American strikes killed at least eight Iranian fighters.A U.S. airstrike at an arms depot in Harabesh, in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour left six Iranian-backed fighters dead. A second U.S. bombing at a post near the town of Mayadeen killed another two fighters, according to the Observatory, whose reporting relies o …