More than 200 US troops have been wounded in the Middle East since the US and Israel launched the war with Iran on February 28, a US Central Command spokesman said on Monday, as the conflict continues to rage across the region.
CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins told The Washington Post that US troops have been wounded in seven countries, including Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, as Iranian missiles and drones have hit targets across the region.
Hawkins said that most injuries happened in the opening days of the war and that some injuries had been reported in the past few days. Last week, the Pentagon acknowledged at least 140 US troops had been wounded, an admission that came only after Reuters reported that the total number of US injuries was as high as 150.
So far, CENTCOM has confirmed that 13 US troops have been killed in the war, including six killed by an Iranian drone attack in Kuwait, one killed by an attack in Saudi Arabia, and six who died when a KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq. One other US soldier died of an unspecified “medical emergency” in Kuwait.
The message from the Trump administration is that more US casualties are likely to happen and that the death of US servicemembers is a thing that “happens” in war. “War is hell. War is chaos,” US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Friday. “And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC135 tanker, bad things can happen.”
