Pentagon: 50 troops suffered brain injuries in Iran strike

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Tuesday raised to 50 the number of United States service members who suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iran’s missile strike earlier this month on an Iraqi airbase, the third time the number of injuries has been increased.

The new casualty total belies President Donald Trump’s initial claim that no Americans were harmed.

Days after the attack, the military said 11 service members were injured. Last week, the Pentagon said that 34 U.S. service members were hurt.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Campbell, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday that 16 additional service members were diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.

Of the 50, Campbell said, 31 service members had returned to duty.

The service members were treated in Iraq, or at military health centres, including Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest US military hospital outside the continental United States, and a US military medical facility in Kuwait.

Trump had initially said he was told that no troops had been injured in the Jan. 8 missile strike on Iraq’s Ain al-Asad air base, which Iran carried out as retaliation for a US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iran’s most powerful general, Qassem Soleimani, on January 3.

The military said symptoms of concussion or traumatic brain injury were not immediately reported after the strike and in some cases became known days later.

Many were in bunkers before nearly a dozen Iranian ballistic missiles exploded.

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