Four American troops are being treated for minor injuries and evaluated for traumatic brain injury after a Thursday indirect fire attack on the Green Village base in eastern Syria, according to a release from Operative Inherent Resolve.
Two rockets hit two support buildings, the release said.
An earlier report from the Associated Press said that two service members had been treated and returned to duty.
The base was previously attacked in January, with eight rockets landing inside the perimeter.
The issue of traumatic brain injuries in U.S. Central Command has gained more and more attention in the past two years, following a rocket attack on Iraq’s al-Asad Air Base in Jan. 2020. Pentagon officials initially reported no casualties, but subsequent screenings in the following weeks found that more than 100 troops had suffered TBIs.
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When asked about the attack during a press conference, then-President Donald Trump downplayed the seriousness of head injuries.
“I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things,” he said at the time, later offering amputations as an example of a more concerning injury. “But I would say, and I can report, that it is not very serious.”
The reporting and tracking of those injuries came under the scrutiny of the Defense Department’s inspector general in July 2020, when the office launched a project to evaluate how doctors diagnosed, treated and reported TBIs up the chain of command.
Based on the as-yet-unreleased results of the first project, a DoD IG spokeswoman told Military Times in October, the IG launched a second evaluation to dig deeper.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
