The United States is deploying additional troops to the Middle East amid heightened tensions in the region, the Pentagon announced on Monday.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, would not provide any details to the Associated Press about how many additional forces Washington would send or what their mission would be, the wire reported.
“In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional U.S. military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region,” Ryder told the AP. “For operational security reasons, I’m not going to comment on or provide specifics.”
The United States currently has some 40,000 troops in the region, according to the Pentagon. On Monday, the aircraft carrier USS Truman, two destroyers and a cruiser departed from Norfolk, Va., towards the Mediterranean for a scheduled deployment.
The new troop increase is the latest indication that the United States is concerned about a military escalation in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel and Lebanon.
On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces struck more than 1,000 targets across Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from firing rockets across the border.
The U.S. State Department updated its travel advice for Lebanon on Saturday to urge U.S. citizens to depart the country while commercial flights remain available. The United States has advised Americans to not travel to Lebanon since July.
In 2022, the State Department estimated that some 86,000 Americans live in Lebanon.