3 soldiers killed in Jordan drone attack identified

WASHINGTON (TND) — The three U.S. soldiers killed by a weekend drone strike on their base in Jordan were identified.

The service-members killed in "Operation Inherent Resolve" were 46-year-old Sgt. William Jerome Rivers; 24-year-old Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders; and 23-year-old Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett.

All three were Army Reserve soldiers were based out of Georgia, according to the Department of Defense.

The Pentagon said the one-way unmanned aerial system "impacted their container housing units" and the incident was under investigation.

All three were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade in Fort Moore, Georgia.

Sanders' hometown ordered flags at half-staff in her honor Monday. The city's post on Facebook received an outpouring of support.

The attack happened in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border, said President Joe Biden.

He blamed Iran-backed militia groups for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes against American forces across the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. officials identified Tower 22 as the site of the attack.

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Sanders and her family were already looking ahead to summer when Sanders was scheduled to return to Waycross, where she helped coach soccer and basketball and worked at a pharmacy while taking college courses with the aim of becoming an X-ray technician.

Sanders' parents said Monday she had volunteered to deploy, eager for a chance to see a different part of the world.

"She was loved. She didn't have any enemies. All the time you saw her smiling," Sanders' father, Shawn Sanders, said in an interview Monday. "This is somebody who was just living life, enjoying life at a young age, working toward a career."

Sanders and her twin brother were the middle children of five siblings born and raised in the community. Her father served in the Marine Corps and her mother, Oneida Oliver-Sanders, had been a member of the county school board.

Sanders joined the Army Reserve five years ago and served as an engineer assigned to a unit based in rural Tifton, Georgia, her father said. She loved to travel, her parents said, and saw the military as a way to see the world. She had previously deployed to Djibouti before volunteering to go to Kuwait, a trip that included a few months in Jordan where the U.S. operates a logistics support base along the Syrian border.

In her spare time while deployed, Sanders would practice jiu-jitsu and run to keep in shape. She relaxed by knitting and coloring in coloring books. She called home almost daily, her parents said. And while she occasionally mentioned drones being shot down at the base, there was no sense of imminent 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."

Though some family members had seen the news on TV of the deadly attack in Jordan, Sanders' parents said they weren't aware anything was wrong until uniformed military officers came to their door Sunday. Shawn Sanders said he waited 20 minutes with the visitors so he and his wife could be told together when she got home from work. But he suspected immediately his daughter was dead.

"I knew, being a former member of the armed services," he said. "I wanted it to be something different. But I knew then."

Sanders' mother said her daughter had talked recently of becoming a full-time Army soldier on active duty once her reservist contract had been fulfilled. She was considering buying a home. And she looked forward to more trips abroad and had been studying Italian in anticipation of someday visiting Italy.

"All of these different things that she had plans for, you know, were just cut short in the blink of an eye," Oneida Sanders said. "I just feel like somebody like her, that's so full of life, it's just unfair that she'll never get to realize those dreams that she had."

Shawn Sanders called the attack that took his daughter's life "a senseless act of violence."

Biden has promised that the U.S. will respond. Shawn Sanders said he's confident Biden will make an appropriate decision. Asked what he thinks would be the correct response, the grieving father declined to say.

"Out of anger for losing a child," he said, "I just can't."

Editor's Note: The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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