Report: Danish Troops Testify to Greater Damages at Ain Al-Assad Base than US Admits
By Staff, southfront.org
A report by a correspondent for Danish TV 2 who has interviewed Danish soldiers positioned at Iraq’s Ain al-Assad airbase, which was the target of a retaliatory attack from Iran against US forces, shows that the damage done to the base has been “much greater” than the US officials acknowledge.
On January 8th, Danish sergeant John and the other Danish soldiers waited for several hours for the Iranian operation on the Ain al-Assad military base in the al-Anbar province in western Iraq.
“It was terrible. It cannot be described and it should not be experienced. We could do nothing; we could just accept it. So, we couldn’t use our training in that situation,” the sergeant said.
A correspondent for Danish TV 2 interviewed him, after most of Denmark’s 133 soldiers, part of Operation Inherent Resolve were evacuated from the base and to Kuwait.
Several sources tell TV 2 that about six hours before Iran targeted the two military bases in Iraq with ballistic missiles, the Danish government and the Defense Force knew about the impending attack.
Thus, John and the other soldiers at the base were notified of the attack several hours before it happened, and they waited for hours in a bunker for the attack to happen.
“We really sat down for a while and waited for them to finish, so we could return to everyday life again. I don’t know how long we waited, but it was several hours,” John said.
The attack came and it still surprised them.
“Suddenly, the first wave came, that’s what I call it. Nine rockets at barely a ton each. It cannot be described. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and I hope to never come to it again,” the sergeant said.
The entire bunker shook, and there was dust falling from the ceiling.
“We had to keep scarves on our faces just to be able to breathe,” John said. According to him and the other Danish soldiers, it was the ignorance and powerlessness that were the worst.
“Not knowing how close the next attack is or when it may come. After all, down in the bunker we had no idea. We could just sit and wait. We couldn’t use any of what we had trained for. We could just wait,” John described.
When the attack was done, the Danish soldiers were surprised that the damage was not so great. They initially expected to go outside and see a desert, with everything destroyed.
“The first strikes were so severe that we were sure we were going to a golden desert and nothing would be left. We were really surprised that everything hadn’t fallen on top of our heads. I would estimate that the nearest rocket hit 300 yards from us, and as we walked around afterwards, there were halves of helicopters, and there were holes so big that you could park a van in them,” the sergeant said.
Psychologists are now on their way to Kuwait to help the Danish soldiers recover from the experience.
“We really need them. This was a situation we were not trained for,” John said.
One thing can be concluded from the report by the Danish television and the weeps of the Danish soldiers aforementioned: damages were actually much greater than the US admitted, with even helicopters being destroyed and not just several buildings damaged and hitting open territory in the camp.
The report is quite showing of the state of NATO troops and the actual level of combat readiness of the troops that allegedly defeated the Wahhabi Daesh [Arabic acronym for “ISIS” / “ISIL”], sitting in a bunker, and then in need of a psychologist after surviving a missile strike that they knew hours in advance was coming.
