President Joe Biden will join grieving families at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Friday to honor three U.S. service members killed in an Iran-backed drone strike in Jordan.
Biden also met privately with the soldiers’ families prior to the dignified transfer of the remains.
Dignified transfer is the process of moving the remains of fallen military members from an aircraft to a waiting vehicle upon their return to U.S. soil.
It’s a solemn ritual that has become relatively uncommon in recent years as the U.S. withdraws from conflicts abroad.
Specialist Breonna Moffett, 23, from Savannah, Georgia, has been identified as one of the soldiers killed in the drone strike
Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia, died in the drone strike on a US air base in Jordan
Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, was one of three American soldiers killed in the drone strike
Biden’s only previous dignified transfer as president came in August 2021, when the remains of thirteen service members killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul were returned.
On that occasion, Biden was criticized by military veterans and Republicans for appearing to check his watch just seconds after saluting the flag-draped caskets being carried past him.
Biden will not speak during the dignified transfer on Friday.
The deaths were the first U.S. fatalities attributed to Iranian-backed militias.
These groups have been intensifying their attacks on U.S. forces in the region for months.
The soldiers killed on Sunday were all from Georgia – Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, sergeant. Kennedy Sanders of Waycross and Sgt. Breonna Moffett from Savannah.
Sanders and Moffett were posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant.
Sanders’ mother, Oneida Oliver-Sanders, said: ‘I just can’t believe I will never be able to hug and kiss my baby again. Life is so unfair. I just want my baby
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Biden for the dignified handover at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
In a statement earlier this week, Biden said, “These service members embodied the very best of our nation.
‘Unwavering in their courage. Unwavering in their duty. Unyielding in their commitment to our country – risking their own safety for the safety of their fellow Americans, and of our allies and partners with whom we stand in the fight against terrorism. It is a fight we will not stop.”
Rivers, Sanders, and Moffett were in the same company of Army engineers based at Fort Moore.
Sanders and Moffett were close friends who regularly called each other from their families back home.
Joe Biden attended his second dignified handover as president
President Biden was widely criticized after appearing to check his watch during a dignified 2021 handover for 13 US troops killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul
The US government said this week that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes the Kataib Hezbollah group, planned, financed and facilitated the drone strike.
More than 40 troops were also injured in the attack on Tower 22, a secret US military outpost in the desert whose location allows US troops to infiltrate and leave Syria quietly.
Biden and White House officials have said the response to the deadly attack will not be a “one-off” and could take weeks.
They have also emphasized that they do not want a wider war with Iran.
Biden is under pressure from Republicans to take strong retaliation and from Democratic allies who warn of escalation.