The United States reported this Friday that four of the six crew members of the LC-135 tanker that crashed yesterday in western Iraq have died. "At approximately 2 p.m. (eastern time; 19:00 GMT) on March 12, a U.S. KC-135 tanker crashed in western Iraq. Four of the six crew members on board have died, while rescue operations continue," reported the U.S. Central Command (Centcom). Centcom assured that "the circumstances of the incident" are being investigated, although it insisted that the plane's crash "was not due to enemy fire or friendly fire." A pro-Iranian militia, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, had claimed responsibility for shooting down the plane, stating that its fighters attacked the aircraft with air defense systems, causing it to crash. The organization also claimed in subsequent messages that a second U.S. aircraft was attacked in western Iraq, and that the aircraft made an emergency landing at "one of the enemy's airports," while its crew managed to get to safety. However, Centcom does not endorse this thesis and has not reported any attack on a second aircraft.
Iran, for its part, maintained that the tanker was hit by a missile fired by Iraqi armed groups. A spokesman for the United Operations Command of Khatam al-Anbiya stated, in statements collected by the Iranian agencies Tasnim and Fars, that the U.S. aircraft was "hit by a missile from the resistance groups in western Iraq," which caused its fall. Subsequently, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard indicated that six people died in the attack, the entire crew of the plane, which according to its version was refueling an "enemy" combat aircraft at the time of impact. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq brings together several militias linked to the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition formed in 2014 to combat the jihadist group Islamic State and since 2016 formally integrated into the Iraqi Armed Forces. Some of these militias, mostly Shiite and close to Iran, have been accused by the United States of launching attacks against U.S. interests in Iraq, and several of them have been designated by Washington as terrorist organizations.
