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Kuwait's military said its air defences intercepted Iranian drones and missiles after Iran launched a fresh wave of strikes targeting the Gulf, including the Ali Al Salem Air Base used by US forces, Al Jazeera reported.
According to the report, Iran also launched strikes towards Jordan, Bahrain and Erbil as part of the latest escalation. Meanwhile, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in a statement broadcast by Iran's state broadcaster IRIB, claimed responsibility for the latest attacks under the "27th wave of Operation Nasr 2." The IRGC said it launched "super-heavy and advanced destructive drones" at the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, claiming to have targeted "a very large ammunition dump", which it said was "completely destroyed with successive explosions". The statement further claimed that "six large shelters" housing personnel at the base were "completely destroyed," while "three other shelters" were "severely damaged", alleging that "a large number of enemy elements" were killed and wounded. The IRGC also accused the United States of concealing battlefield losses, claiming Washington was "lying to its own people" about casualties and calling on "the American media to investigate the realities of this war" and "expose the real statistics and censorship methods." It added that "punitive operations against the aggressors continue." Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, on Wednesday, the Pentagon on its official website reported the casualties of 18 US Service members during the war in Iran. But by Thursday, the War Department was found to have lowered the official figures of casualties, reporting that 14 American troops had been killed in the war. In response to the change in figures, the three military officials told the NYT that one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list, i.e., three in Jordan and one in northern Iran. The reason cited was the death of the servicemen after the President declared a cease-fire in April. The acting press secretary for the Pentagon, Joel Valdez, attributed the change instead to "temporary data disruptions" on the website that he suggested would be "quickly fixed". In a separate statement, regarding its strikes on Bahrain, the IRGC claimed it had destroyed the "remaining building" of what it called an intelligence data centre of the American company Amazon, saying the facility "plays a major role in completing the intelligence of the American" military. Bahraini and US officials, as well as Amazon, have not yet responded to the claim. (ANI)
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