TEHRAN — 16 U.S. service members with fatal injuries sustained during Iran’s attack against the Ain Al-Assad airbase earlier this month have been taken to a hospital in camp Arifjan in the Ahmed al-Jaber airbase in Kuwait, a leading Kuwaiti newspaper disclosed on Sunday.

According to Fars, the Arabic-language Al-Qabas paper quoted informed sources as saying that the U.S. soldiers, including some whose bodies were severely burnt and some others who had sustained shrapnel wounds, have been transferred to a U.S. military hospital in Kuwait under strict security measures.

It added that the wounded military men have gone under surgical operations and are still kept at the ICU section of the hospital.

According to the paper, several other U.S. forces who had sustained mild injuries in Iran's missile strike are being treated in Iraq.

U.S. President Donald Trump had claimed that there was no casualty in Iran's missile raid on the Ain Al-Assad airbase, which came as a revenge for a U.S. drone attack that killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Central Command revealed that 11 personnel stationed at the airbase had to be sent out of the country after displaying concussion symptoms.

“While no U.S. service members were killed” in the Iranian missile attack on the military base, “several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed”, Navy Captain Bill Urban said in a statement.

The temporary removal of the troops was taken “out of an abundance of caution”, Urban said, refusing to divulge any more details about the condition of the servicemen or the extent of their injuries.

“The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual's medical status,” he added.

The air base, which houses U.S. troops, is one of the largest and oldest military bases which is located in Al-Anbar province in western Iraq. It found itself under fire from volleys of ballistic missiles launched from Iran days after the U.S. assassination of Soleimani, who played a major role in defeating Daesh (ISIS) in both Syria and Iraq.

His assassination has inflamed tensions between Washington and Tehran, and drew a harsh rebuke from Baghdad, prompting the Iraqi Parliament to pass a resolution ordering American forces to leave the country.

MH/PA