US claims naval ‘strike group’ in Mediterranean to hit Daesh in Syria, Iraq

The US military has announced that a naval “strike group” of warships led by the USS Dwight Eisenhower aircraft carrier has begun flight operations this week to support what it claimed as “the continuing campaign” against remnants of Daesh terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

“We can provide a wide range of options to our nation and allies in deterring adversarial aggression and disruption of maritime security and regional stability,” the strike group commander, Rear Adm. Scott Robertson, declared as quoted in a Friday report by Daily Press a local newspaper in Newport News, Virginia, home to major US naval bases that deploy warships to the Western Asia and Persian Gulf regions.

According to the report, US warplanes “from Carrier Air Wing 3” -- based at the nearby Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach – began flying on March 31 “in support of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve to demonstrate US commitment to security in the region.”

In addition to the Norfolk-based USS Eisenhower and Carrier Air Wing 3, the strike group also includes guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey and the destroyers USS Mitscher, USS Laboon, USS Mahan and USS Thomas Hudner, the report added.

Currently operating in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the strike group was initially deployed five weeks ago, “and operations so far included a joint exercise with the Royal Moroccan Navy and Air Force and with a multi-national group led by Romanian forces in the Black Sea,” it further noted.

The report also cited task force spokesman Col. Wayne Marotto as claiming last week that the latest US operations against purported Daesh “holdouts in northern Iraq’s Makhmour Mountains” included “more than 300 airstrikes, which hit 120 hideouts and killed 27 terrorists.”

Such claims -- though never mentioned in Iraqi media outlets --came amid recent reports that US forces occupying Syria have airlifted 40 members of the notorious Daesh terror group from al-Houri prison to a military base in al-Shadadi city in the country’s southern Hasakah province.

Syria’s official news agency SANA reported Wednesday that “three US military helicopters and three attack helicopters landed on Tuesday evening in al-Shadadi base.”

Al-Houl prison lies east of Hasakah city and is run by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a US-sponsored anti-Damascus alliance of predominantly Kurdish militants.

Two Iraqi terrorists, identified as Ziyad Idris (aka Abu Saif al-Iraqi), and Najdat Masoud Rida (aka Abu Bakr al-Furati), were among those airlifted to al-Shadadi, SANA added.

Also in January, Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television network cited field sources as saying that US helicopters transferred batches of Daesh terrorists, most of them Iraqi citizens, from the prisons of Ghuwayran and al-Sena’a in Hasakah to American bases in Iraq.

The report further underlined that more than 100 of the airlifted terrorists were provided with weapons and then released, noting that Washington sought to see more terror attacks across Syria and Iraq in order to justify extended US military presence in the two terror-ravaged Muslim nations.

The latest US claim of anti-terror strikes in Iraq and Syria also coincided with reports of persisting attacks against occupying American military forces in the country, where  the leader of anti-terror movement Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq insisted on Thursday that armed resistance against US troops there will continue until their full withdrawal from Iraq.

“As resistance groups, we have taken up and will continue to take up arms to destroy any US or US military presence on Iraqi soil,” Qais Khazali declared.

“There is no room for American military bases, neither in al-Assad nor in al-Harir,” he added. “This is the decision and promise of the men of resistance.”

Iraqi lawmakers, last year, approved a bill requiring the Baghdad government to end the presence of all foreign military forces in the Arab country.

The legislative decision came two days after the high-profile terror assassination of top Iranian and Iraqi anti-terror commanders – General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s PMU – near Baghdad airport in a drone strike ordered by former US president Donald Trump and supported by its current President Joe Biden.

The US terror assassination of the two commanders, who played a major role in the defeat of the Daesh terrorist group in Iraq then sparked a major surge of anti-American sentiments in the country and across the region.

This is while there have been persisting reports showing Washington’s direct or indirect support through its regional allies for the terrorist group in the past years.

Numerous accounts have emerged alleging airlifts, weapon airdrops and aerial support for the Takfiri group, particularly at a time its strength has virtually diminished in both Syria and Iraq.

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