A rescue mission was underway after a US military refuelling aircraft crashed in Iraq, US Central Command said.
The KC-135 refuelling aircraft went down in western Iraq after an “incident” involving another US aircraft. The second aircraft landed safely at the Ben Gurion Airport in Israel on Thursday evening, Centcom said, claiming the incident was “not due to hostile fire or friendly fire”.
"The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury," it said in a statement, using the military name of the US operation against Iran.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Centcom said more information would be made available “as the situation develops”.
A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters the other aircraft involved in the incident was also a KC-135 and the one that crashed had as many as six service members on board.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of armed factions backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft.
The group said in a statement it had shot down the KC-135 aircraft "in defence of our country's sovereignty and airspace".
The KC-135, developed by Boeing in the 1950s and early 1960s, is the backbone of the US military's air refuelling fleet. Refuelling aircraft play a key role in wars by keeping fighter jets and bombers adequately fuelled for combat without needing to land.
Last week, three US fighter jets were shot down over Kuwait in what American officials described as a “friendly fire incident”.
Footage posted online showed a jet falling from the sky in flames and a CNN analysis of the video suggested it was an F-15E twin-engine fighter jet. All six aircrew ejected safely and survived.
The US has sent a large number of aircraft to the Middle East since the beginning of the war against Iran on 28 February. Since the US and Israel started carrying out strikes against Iran, at least seven US troops have been killed.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that as many as 150 US troops had been wounded in the war so far. In all, over 2,000 people had been killed, including almost 700 by the Israeli military in Lebanon.
French president Emmanuel Macron said a soldier from his country was killed and several were wounded during an attack in northern Iraq, hours after an Italian base was also targeted in the area.
Meanwhile, president Donald Trump said on Thursday that the situation in Iran was “moving along very rapidly” but signalled that the war would continue.
“Our military is unsurpassed, there's never been anything like it, nobody’s ever seen anything like it,” he said. "They really are a nation of terror and hate, and they’re paying a big price right now."
Iran has warned it will not back down despite sustaining heavy damage to civilian and military infrastructure.
On Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned it would set the region’s oil and gas sites “on fire” if there were attacks on its energy infrastructure, according to CNN.
“In the event of such aggression, all the region’s oil and gas infrastructure in which the United States and its Western allies have a vested interest will be set on fire and destroyed,” they said.
Earlier, Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran would “not relent until you are sorry for this grave miscalculation”, addressing the US president.
Tehran on Thursday released a statement from the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, saying Iran would fight on and keep the Strait of Hormuz closed as leverage against the US and Israel.
"I assure everyone that we will not neglect avenging the blood of your martyrs," it said.
Mr Khamenei did not appear in person and his remarks were read out by a state television presenter.
Hours later, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his first press conference since the start of the war to issue a veiled threat to assassinate the new supreme leader.
"I wouldn’t issue life insurance policies on any of the leaders of the terrorist organisation,” he said. “I don't intend to give an exact message here about what we are planning or what we are going to do.”
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