Nearly a dozen U.S. troops were wounded severely enough by Iranian missile and drone attacks in Jordan and other countries this month that they were flown to a U.S. military hospital in Germany for treatment, a U.S. military official said on Wednesday.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The Defense Department declined to comment.
Flight tracker websites have identified Air Force C-17 medevac flights from Jordan to Germany in recent days.
The seriously wounded service members are among the roughly 100 American troops that the Defense Department recently said were injured by Iranian attacks since early July.
Most of those service members have returned to duty, the Pentagon said. About 50 of the injuries were suffered in recent attacks on bases in Jordan where U.S. forces are stationed, U.S. officials said.
The Defense Department did not disclose the latest casualties in Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East until The New York Times reported on injuries from four attacks last week, the last of which, on Friday, killed three soldiers and wounded several others.
A total of 18 U.S. service members have died in the war since it started on Feb. 28, and about 550 have been wounded so far in the conflict. At least 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a rights group focused on Iran.
In the days since a fragile truce collapsed this month, the Pentagon has provided little information about the American military strategy after nearly five months of war. The last major Pentagon briefing on the war was in early May.
In statements after airstrikes against Iranian military sites last week, U.S. Central Command said it was retaliating for Iran’s attacks against commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, never mentioning Iran’s strikes on bases in the region, including in Jordan.
Central Command is not required to release information about injured service members, especially when they quickly return to duty, a U.S. military official said.
Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said that the military had not withheld or misrepresented U.S. casualties in the war. “Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” he said in a statement on Monday.
He later posted on social media that the “vast majority” of the nearly 100 casualties since July 7 involved “mild concussions,” and 96 percent of those service members have returned to duty.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a social media post over the weekend that the deaths of the troops in Jordan “only stiffens our resolve.”
