The US military announced that three service members have been killed in its operation against Iran, marking the first US casualties in the ongoing attacks on Iran.
The announcement on Sunday came on the second day of strikes by the US and Israel that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and prompted retaliatory fire from Iran toward targets across the Middle East.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed in a statement that three US service members were killed and five others were "seriously wounded" in the operation.
"Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions—and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing," it added.
The US and Israel continued to launch attacks across Iran on Sunday, the second day of a campaign that US President Donald Trump says aims to remove Iran's government from power. Iran responded to the assault with attacks targeting US assets across the Middle East, raising fears of a wider regional war.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reported on Sunday that it had targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with four ballistic missiles.
A US official told Al Jazeera that the Iranian attack did not cause any damage.
CENTCOM said on X that the aircraft carrier "continues to launch aircraft in support of CENTCOM's relentless campaign to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime."
Reporting from Washington DC, Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher said the deaths of US troops would "change a lot of things for the United States."
"Donald Trump, of course, campaigned on the idea of being a president who wasn't going to take the US into wars. He said that [former US Vice President] Kamala Harris, if she were elected, would start a fight with Iran that would lead to World War III," Fisher said.
"There are many on the Democratic side who now want an emergency debate in Congress about this [the US operation in Iran] because what they want to know is, what are the administration's plans? Where does this go? How long is this going to last?"
"And the big question, of course, is how many more service personnel will be put at risk," Fisher added.
Still, Trump told Fox News on Sunday that things were "moving quickly" during the US operation on Iran following the killings of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top political figures.
"I'm not worried about anything, and things are going well," he said.
"Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks if it weren't for our strikes against its nuclear facilities, and then this type of attack wouldn't have been possible," he added.
Iran vowed retaliation for the killing of Khamenei and the ongoing US-Israeli attacks on the country, as Foreign Minister Abbas Argachi told Al Jazeera that there were no "limits to our self-defence."
Source: www.aljazeera.com