WASHINGTON (AP) — The official U.S. military death count from the war with Iran has climbed to 14 service members, following the death of a Navy pilot whose helicopter went down in the Arabian Sea earlier this month.
The number of American troops wounded in the conflict has also grown, now exceeding 400 as of Monday. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, confirmed that the majority of those injuries involved traumatic brain injuries.
The helicopter went down on July 1 in what the Navy initially called an emergency landing. At the time, officials stated there was “no indication the emergency was caused by hostile action.” The three other sailors on board were rescued shortly after the crash.
The Pentagon’s casualty count added this as one non-hostile death in July. Prior to this, the last recorded deaths came in March, at the outset of the war, when 13 service members were killed in a series of separate incidents.
Those earlier deaths included six soldiers killed in an Iranian drone strike on a command center in Kuwait. A seventh soldier died more than a week after being wounded in an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Six additional service members lost their lives when a KC-135 refueling aircraft supporting operations against Iran went down in Iraq.
The total wounded count now stands at 414, including a U.S. Air Force member added to the list Monday. While Iran and the United States have resumed trading strikes, it remains unclear whether that renewed activity contributed to the airman’s injury.
U.S. Central Command did not provide specific details about that airman. Traumatic brain injuries — largely caused by nearby missile strikes and explosions — have become the defining wound of this conflict, and their long-term effects on service members are still not fully understood. Along with post-traumatic stress disorder, they have emerged as some of the most common injuries among veterans of the post-9/11 era.
When pressed Monday for updated figures on seriously wounded troops, U.S. Central Command spokeswoman Maj. Emma Thompson said she had no new information to share. She repeated that “almost all” of the injured have since returned to active duty and declined to say how many troops had been wounded severely enough to require evacuation from the region.
