Washington, Jul 29: The Pentagon said a new, separate category was created in its official casualty system to account for those killed and wounded in the renewed US-Iran fighting because “Operation Epic Fury,” the military’s name for combat operations against Tehran, has ended.
The Defence Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, has removed the four soldiers killed and dozens of troops wounded in the latest exchange of fire from its official Iran war tally and placed them in a new category called “Overseas Operations.”
The overall total of wounded from the conflict now stands at 642 troops, between the figures listed under Operation Epic Fury and those listed in the new category in the Pentagon’s online system.
A Pentagon official said Tuesday that because Operation Epic Fury has concluded, the military has decided to classify casualties tied to the latest strikes in the new category. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, would not offer a date for the formal end of the operation.
That characterisation raises questions about properly counting the impact to US service members after the US military carried out nearly two weeks of consecutive strikes against Iran in a bid to gain control of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran responded by striking neighbouring countries in the Middle East that host US forces.
After a few days of paused hostilities and efforts by mediators to get both sides back to negotiations, US Central Command said Tuesday that it intercepted multiple ballistic missiles fired at American troops in the region. The US and Iran had agreed to a tenuous ceasefire in April and signed an interim deal to end the war in mid-June before strikes began again this month when Iran attacked ships in the crucial shipping route.
After the four soldiers who were killed this month were removed from the Iran war death toll in the online system, Pentagon spokespeople said last week on social media that it was not an effort to hide the growing human cost of the conflict but rather the result of “anomalies” and “temporary data disruptions” that were being resolved “imminently.”
On Sunday, those troops appeared by name in the new “Overseas Operations” category. Three soldiers were killed after a base in Jordan was struck July 17 by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, and one died in Iraq a day later during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at a White House briefing in May that the operation had “concluded,” saying that “we achieved the objectives of that operation.”
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before Congress last week, he didn’t argue that the Iran war had concluded and even offered lawmakers some cost estimates for the conflict that ran through Sept 30.(PTI)
