Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders was supposed to come home to Waycross, Georgia, that summer. She had plans: a possible switch to full-time active duty, maybe a house, and a trip to Italy she had been preparing for by studying the language. On January 28, 2024, a drone struck her base in northeast Jordan and ended all of it. She was 24.
Two other Army Reserve soldiers died with her: Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23. The Defense Department said all three belonged to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, based at Fort Moore, Georgia. They were serving in Operation Inherent Resolve. The Pentagon said the one-way unmanned aircraft hit their container housing units, and it opened an investigation.
The attack
At least 34 other US personnel were wounded, the US military said. The site was a military base known as Tower 22, close to the Syrian border. US officials named it as the target.
President Joe Biden spoke on Sunday, saying the facts were still being gathered but that the attack came from “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.” He promised the US would “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner” of its choosing. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, claimed strikes on three bases that day, one of them on the Jordan-Syria border.
Jordan’s first reaction was to place the attack on the Syrian side of the line. Government spokesman Muhannad Mubaidin told state television it happened outside the kingdom. Later Jordan’s government condemned what it called a “terrorist attack” on a military advance post just inside its border and said it was working with Washington against terrorism.
Al Jazeera reported that these were the first US troop deaths in the Middle East since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7. Tehran correspondent Resul Serdar said more than 100 attacks had hit US military installations in the region in that time. Iran’s position, he said, was that it did not plan or direct the strikes, and that its allies made their own decisions.
Colin Clarke of the Soufan Group took a harder view. “There is no denying that,” he said of the idea that a regional war was under way, adding that Iran “funds, trains and equips these groups.” He expected heavy pressure on Biden to answer.
A family in Georgia
Sanders had joined the Army Reserve five years earlier and served as an engineer in a unit based in Tifton, Georgia. She had deployed to Djibouti, then volunteered for Kuwait, a posting that included a few months at the logistics base in Jordan. Her father, Shawn Sanders, a former Marine, said she loved to travel and saw the Army as a way to do it. Between duties she practiced jiu-jitsu, ran, knitted and filled in coloring books. She called home nearly every day.
Drones being shot down at the base came up in those calls now and then, her parents said, but never as a sign of danger. “She was speaking with her mom the day before,” Shawn Sanders said. “It wasn’t like they were at high alert or in a secure bunker.”
The family learned of her death when uniformed officers came to the door on Sunday. Her father waited 20 minutes with them so his wife could be told alongside him. “I knew, being a former member of the armed services,” he said. “I wanted it to be something different. But I knew then.”
Her hometown lowered flags to half-staff on Monday. Her father called the attack “a senseless act of violence.” Asked what response he wanted from Washington, he declined to say. “Out of anger for losing a child, I just can’t.”
Sources
- Three US service members killed in Jordan drone attack, Biden says | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera
- 3 soldiers killed in Jordan drone attack identified
