New video emerges from Iranian missile attack on U.S. forces

New video emerges from Iranian missile attack on U.S. forces

by
  • The U.S. military released new footage of the Iranian missile attack on American troops on January 8, 2020.
  • The video was filmed by a drone and shows the missiles hitting Al Asad Air Force Base.
  • The American military on the ground thought they were going to die.
  • Visit the Business section of the Insider for more stories.

The United States released unpublished video footage of the Iranian missile attack on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq last year.

A drone recorded the attack as a flurry of Iranian short-range ballistic missiles carrying 1,000 to 2,000 pound ammunition that rained at Al Asad Air Force Base on January 8, 2020.

The unpublished video of the attack was obtained and released by 60 Minutes on Sunday.

The U.S. Central Command then released a longer, more detailed video on Monday.

A few days before 2020, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to kill Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian military officer and commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Iranian general was killed in an airstrike outside Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020. The airstrike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of Kata’ib Hezbollah. The Iran-backed militia group carried out deadly attacks against US military and civilians in Iraq.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps retaliated on January 8, launching more than a dozen ballistic missiles at the US and Coalition forces at Al Asad and Irbil Air Force Base.

American soldiers are at the site hit by the Iranian bombing at Ain al-Asad airbase in Anbar, Iraq.

American soldiers are at the site hit by the Iranian bombing at Ain al-Asad airbase in Anbar, Iraq.

AP Photo / Qassim Abdul-Zahra


The American troops who were on the ground thought they were going to die, turned out to be distressing testimonies from local military personnel.

After receiving information that an Iranian attack was imminent, Lieutenant Colonel Staci Coleman, commander of the 443rd Air Expeditionary Squadron at Al Asad Air Force Base, had to decide which military personnel to evacuate and who would remain to defend the base.

“I was deciding who was going to live and die,” recalled Coleman in his testimony about the event.

“Honestly, I thought anyone who stayed behind would die,” she said. “I didn’t believe anyone would survive a ballistic missile attack and it made me feel sick and helpless.”

Major Alan Johnson, who was at Al Asad, told 60 Minutes that he received an intelligence assessment that “Iran’s intention is to level the base and we may not survive”.

Fearing the worst, he recorded a video for his family. In the moving video, he said crying to his 6-year-old son: “Just know in your heart that I love you. Bye, friend.”

No American soldiers were killed in the Iranian missile attack, but more than 100 military personnel suffered traumatic brain injuries, combat wounds that Trump has controversially declared “not very serious”. A total of 29 soldiers wounded during the attack received Purple Hearts.

The damage to the military bases that host US troops, specifically the Al Asad Air Force Base, has been severe in some places. The fact that no one died in the ballistic attack was a miracle.

Damage at Al Asad airbase in Iraq is seen in a satellite photo taken on January 8, 2020

Damage at Al Asad airbase in Iraq is seen in a satellite photo taken on January 8, 2020

Planet / Brochure via REUTERS


“These things have 50- to 100-foot blast radii, and that is just the shrapnel in the actual explosion,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, of the Iranian missiles. He characterized Iranian ballistic missiles fired at American troops as “very, very significant and serious weapons”.

Source