TEHRAN, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Three members of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed early Thursday in U.S. airstrikes, as the IRGC said it had launched retaliatory strikes on U.S. military facilities in Jordan and Kuwait, Iranian media reported.
Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency identified the victims as Mahmoud Mollajabbari, Mohammad-Reza Cheraghi, and Jamal Amiri, serving with the IRGC's Ansar al-Mahdi unit in northwestern Zanjan province.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a post on the social media platform X early Thursday that its forces had completed "a heavy wave of strikes against Iran in response to yesterday's attempted missile attacks on U.S. forces."
It added that U.S. forces struck dozens of IRGC sites, "including military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities."
According to Iran's official news agency IRNA, the strikes mainly targeted four southern Iranian provinces of Hormozgan, Khuzestan, Fars, and Bushehr.
It added that one strike on a residential building on Qeshm Island killed three members of a family and wounded two others belonging to the same family.
In a statement on its official news outlet Sepah News, the IRGC said its aerospace forces struck the Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan with ballistic missiles, targeting the deployment ramp and maintenance and repair hangar of the F-35 fighter jets.
It added that three F-35s were destroyed, three others heavily damaged, and several "enemy" officers and technical and maintenance personnel killed.
The IRGC also announced that its aerospace and ground forces had struck U.S. facilities and assets at the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, claiming to have destroyed two drone hangars, an aviation fuel depot, and U.S. military helicopters.
The operation, it added, was aimed at "punishing the aggressors."
The latest clashes came after a few days of pause in hostilities between the United States and Iran. Before the pause, the United States launched multiple waves of strikes against Iranian targets, saying they were in response to Iranian attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and aimed at "degrading Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping." Iran responded with missile and drone attacks targeting U.S. military bases and facilities across the region. ■
