WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- Dramatic images have emerged showing what remains of a U.S airbase in Iraq after it was targeted by Iran, as it’s revealed American soldiers were warned two-and-a-half hours in advance that the area was going to be hit by missiles.
Officers told CNN that most American soldiers were either flown out of the Al-Asad base by 11 p.m. on Tuesday local time or were sheltering in bunkers - waiting until the missiles fell at around 1.30 a.m. on Wednesday.
The Iranian missile strike lasted about two hours. According to CNN, the only area of the base that was targeted was where American soldiers were concentrated.
Missiles landed just a few feet from the bunkers, and officers told CNN it was a "miracle” that there were allegedly no casualties.
London-based Al Mayadeen TV channel and several Iranian and Iraqi politicians have said the strike had caused casualties, some of whom had been transferred to the occupied Palestinian territories and others to an American hospital in Baghdad and to Jordan.
Iranian officials say the country launched 13 ballistic missiles, at least 11 of which hit Iraq’s al-Asad air base and the rest that hit a military base in Erbil.
U.S. officials said on Thursday that they were tipped off by a European embassy that an Iranian missile attack on the base was imminent.
The Iranians prepared for the missile strikes on two airbases housing American troops by intentionally making sure U.S. intelligence could detect the plans via satellites and eavesdropping, the officials told TIME magazine.
Intelligence managed to pick up the threat of strikes nearly three
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