The US paid tribute to the fallen soldiers in Jordan

US President Joe Biden joined a highly emotional military ceremony at an air base in Delaware for the return of three US soldiers killed in Jordan in a drone attack blamed on an Iran-backed militia, AFP reported.
Biden, accompanied by first lady Jill Biden, flew to Dover Air Force Base for the event.
He and the families of the three slain soldiers were met by a gray C-5 military transport plane that sent the bodies in flag-draped.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Coo Brown were also in attendance — a recognition of the importance, as well as the relative rarity, of returning dead service members after the US exits major foreign conflicts.
William Rivers, Kennedy Sanders and Breonna Moffett, all from the southern state of Georgia, were killed in a drone strike on their remote US base in Jordan, near Syria.
The White House blamed the attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq militia, and Biden said he would order counterstrikes, without specifying timing or targets.
Although the United States is now freed from its large-scale military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, rising tensions in the Middle East fueled by the war between Israel and Hamas threaten to draw American forces back into the regional conflict.
These are the first US military deaths by enemy fire since Hamas' surprise attack on Israel on October 7, which triggered a deadly Israeli offensive in Gaza.
However, the U.S. military and Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria periodically exchange fire, while Yemen's Houthi rebels engage in near-daily clashes with U.S. Navy ships or fire on international civilian shipping in the Red Sea.
Two Navy SEALs — some of the U.S. military's most elite special forces — died while trying to board and search a ship in January. /BGNES