WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military on Monday identified two soldiers killed in action last week as part of the war with Iran. The Defense Department said 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, were killed in Jordan while supporting a U.S. mission against the Islamic State group.
It remains unclear how Feehan and Gonzales were killed. On Saturday, U.S. Central Command said two service members died in Jordan while defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. The U.S. military has said the total number of deaths in the war with Iran is 17.
Fatalities across the region
The deaths occurred amid a conflict in which American forces are deployed across the Middle East. The source said the fatalities show that U.S. soldiers do not need to be on the ground in Iran to face lethal risks involving drones, missiles and airplanes. Other nations have become targets as fighting escalated after a breakdown in peace talks. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has said the war is necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The first American fatalities came shortly after the war began on Feb. 28, when an Iranian drone strike at a civilian port in Kuwait killed six soldiers. They belonged to a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa and were working at a shipping container-style building that had no defenses. A seventh soldier died more than a week after being wounded in Iran’s March 1 attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Later in March, six service members were killed when a KC-135 refueling aircraft supporting U.S. military operations against Iran crashed in Iraq. Central Command said the aircraft was in “friendly” airspace when an unspecified incident involving another aircraft occurred.
On Monday, the military also said a Navy pilot died in a helicopter crash in the Arabian Sea. The Navy initially described the July 1 crash as an emergency landing and said there was “no indication the emergency was caused by hostile action.” The other three sailors aboard were rescued. The latest U.S. military death from the conflict occurred Saturday in northern Iraq, where an American service member was killed during a “controlled detonation” of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone. A second service member was wounded and was receiving treatment for a minor injury. The military said it was withholding additional information until 24 hours after families had been notified.
The deaths have not been limited to Americans. Iranian authorities said at least 50 people had been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes during the previous three weeks, including eight people killed in a strike on a bridge Friday. People working on ships, foreign workers and others in Gulf nations, Israel and Lebanon have also died in the conflict.