The war opens another front: The Pentagon faces accusations of covering up dozens of wounded soldiers following Iranian attacks

The Pentagon is facing renewed scrutiny after The New York Times revealed on Monday that it failed to report dozens of injuries sustained by U.S. service members during recent attacks by Iran in Jordan, which also claimed the lives of two members of the U.S. Armed Forces. According to the report, several U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, stated that additional injuries sustained by U.S. military personnel, as well as damage to military helicopters caused by a wave of Iranian attacks on U.S. positions in Jordan, were not publicly reported.

"Injuries in the military encompass everything from minor sprained ankles during routine training to incidents entirely unrelated to combat operations. Cherry-picking raw numbers without context paints a deliberately misleading and incomplete picture," Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement released on Monday. Similarly, Parnell also dismissed allegations that the Pentagon had deliberately concealed the number of casualties, calling them "baseless" and "malicious."

According to figures released by the Department of Defense's Casualty Analysis System, the clashes have so far resulted in 17 U.S. service members killed and another 427 wounded.

The news comes a day after the Pentagon announced that U.S. forces searching for a soldier missing following an Iranian attack in Jordan recovered unidentified human remains at the site of the attack. However, authorities noted that the identification process has not yet been completed. In a separate incident, the Army confirmed that another U.S. service member died on July 18 in northern Iraq while participating in the controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian attack drone. A second service member sustained minor injuries and continues to receive medical care.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) stated that it is withholding the identities of both the deceased personnel and the missing servicemember until their families have been officially notified. On Saturday, the military agency reported that two U.S. service members were killed and another remains missing after Iranian attacks struck two U.S. military bases in Jordan on Friday.