DONALD Trump Jr and Democrats have hit out at President Joe Biden over airstrikes in Syria.
Biden's first airstrike has reportedly left 22 people dead as Iran-backed militia targets in Syria were wiped out by bombs.
The former president's son took aim at Biden and wrote: "I'm surprised it only took about 33 days to get back into Middle East conflicts.
"Didn't think Biden would make the Military Industrial Complex wait that long to start dropping bombs."
Representative Illhan Omar, retweeted Jen Psaki's tweet which read: "Also what is the legal authority for strikes?
"Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country."
Omar wrote: "Great question."
The U.S. dropped seven 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions ( JDAMs) at a crossing used by Iranian-backed militia groups to move weapons across the border on February 15.
The U.S. appeared to be retaliating for a February 15 rocket attack on the American military base at Erbil International Airport – which was later claimed by the Guardians of Blood Brigade.
That attack, in a region run by Kurds, killed one contractor who was not American and injured numerous American contractors and an American service member.
The president, Kamala Harris and Jen Psaki have been accused of hypocrisy in relation to tweets slamming Trump strikes.
In one tweet, dating back to 2019, Biden called Donald Trump “erratic” and “impulsive” after he threatened to bomb Iran.
“No president should order a military strike without fully understanding the consequences,” he wrote.
"We don't need another war in the Middle East, but Trump's actions toward Iran only make that more likely."
Those killed in Biden’s airstrike were killed on their positions and a weapons shipment at the time when it was crossing from Iraq to Syria, via a military crossing near Al-Qa’em crossing in Al-Bokamal area in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor.
A statement on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights website said the death toll from the attack was expected to rise further.
“The attack left several militiamen injured, some seriously,” the statement read.
“There are unconfirmed reports of more casualties.”
The airstrike was the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration, after repeated tensions between Iran and the Trump White House over the previous four years which reached a peak following Qassem Soleimani's killing in early 2020.
The U.S. has not definitively blamed any specific group for the outrage or attributed it to any Iranian proxies in the region, but the administration has made it clear where it places the blame.
22 DEAD
"At President Biden's direction, U.S. military forces… conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria," said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby after last night's strike.
Kirby said that Biden ordered the strikes at Al Bukamal after consulting with U.S. allies, including coalition partners.
They were authorized "in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel," he stated.
"President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq."
Pentagon officials later revealed they had offered up several larger groups of targets but Biden approved the smallest option.
"I'm confident in the target that we went after, we know what we hit," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters flying with him from California to Washington.
He added: "We're confident that that target was being used by the same Shia militants that conducted the strikes," he said referring to the February 15 attack.
"We said a number of times that we will respond on our timeline. We wanted to be sure of the connectivity and we wanted to be sure that we had the right targets."
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