Commenting on 25 February U.S. airstrikes against “infrastructure used by Iranian-backed militant groups” in eastern Syria, a U.S. military spokesperson reported that the operation had killed “one fighter and wounded two others, in addition to destroying nine buildings”. He emphasised that “this was really designed to do two things: to remove that compound from their utilisation of it as an entry control point from Syria into Iraq, and two, to send a very strong signal that we are not going to tolerate attacks on our people and on our Iraqi partners”.