{"id":356501,"date":"2025-12-19T23:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/356501\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T23:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:44:08","slug":"us-carries-out-massive-strike-against-is-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/356501\/","title":{"rendered":"US carries out ‘massive’ strike against IS in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US says its military has carried out a “massive strike” against the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria, in response to a deadly attack on American forces in the country.<\/p>\n

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Operation Hawkeye Strike was aimed at eliminating IS “fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites”.<\/p>\n

Fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery hit multiple targets in central Syria, US officials told CBS, the BBC’s media partner in the US. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump later said “we are striking very strongly” against IS strongholds, after the 13 December IS ambush in the city of Palmyra in which two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter were killed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a post on X late on Friday, Hegseth wrote: “This is not the beginning of a war – it is a declaration of vengeance. The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people.<\/p>\n

“If you target Americans – anywhere in the world – you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.<\/p>\n

“Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue,” the US defence secretary added.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the US Central Command (Centcom) said that “US forces have commenced a large-scale strike” against IS, adding that more information would be provided soon.<\/p>\n

Posting on Truth Social later on, President Trump said the US “is inflicting very serious retaliation, just as I promised, on the murderous terrorists responsible”.<\/p>\n

He said the Syrian government was “fully in support”.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OBHR) said IS positions near the cities of Raqqa and Deir ez Zor were targeted.<\/p>\n

It said that a prominent IS leader and a number of fighters were killed.<\/p>\n

IS has not publicly commented. The BBC was unable to verify the targets immediately.<\/p>\n

Centcom, which directs American military operations in Europe, Africa and the Indo-Pacific, earlier said that the deadly attack in Palmyra was carried out by an IS gunman, who was “engaged and killed”.<\/p>\n

Another three US soldiers were injured in the ambush, with a Pentagon official saying that it happened “in an area where the Syrian president does not have control.”<\/p>\n

At the same time, the SOHR said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security forces.<\/p>\n

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the identity of the gunman has not been released.<\/p>\n

In 2019, a US-backed alliance of Syrian fighters announced IS had lost the last pocket of territory in Syria it controlled, <\/a>but since then the jihadist group has carried out some attacks.<\/p>\n

The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n

US troops have maintained a presence in Syria since 2015 to help train other forces as part of a campaign against IS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US says its military has carried out a “massive strike” against the Islamic State group (IS) in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-356501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}