Two US troops and an interpreter were killed in central Syria after an alleged member of the Islamic State group opened fire on a joint US-Syrian patrol, officials said.<\/p>\n
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the deaths on X after Syria’s state media earlier reported that an attack in the city of Palmyra had wounded US and Syrian troops.<\/p>\n
“An ambush by a lone ISIS gunman” resulted in the deaths and injuries to three additional troops, said CENTCOM, which oversees the US military in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
“The gunman was engaged and killed,” it said.<\/p>\n
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the attack occurred as the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US-Syrian government patrol”.<\/p>\n
“The savage who perpetrated this attack was killed by partner forces,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X.<\/p>\n
In a post on his Truth Social platform, US President Donald Trump vowed “very serious retaliation” mourning the loss of “three great patriots”.<\/p>\n
He described the incident in remarks to reporters as a “terrible” attack.<\/p>\n
Mr Parnell said the identities of the dead troops would be withheld until after their families were notified.<\/p>\n
The incident is the first of its kind reported since Islamist-led forces overthrew longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December last year, and rekindled the country’s ties with the United States.<\/p>\n
A Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the attack “took place in an area where the Syrian President does not have control”.<\/p>\n
Syrian state news agency SANA, quoting a security source, earlier reported that several US troops and two Syrian service members had been wounded in the attack.<\/p>\n
The soldiers were taking part in a “joint field tour” in Palmyra, which was once under the control of the Islamic State (IS) group, SANA reported.<\/p>\n
A Syrian military official who requested anonymity said that the shots were fired “during a meeting between Syrian and American officers” at a Syrian base in Palmyra.<\/p>\n
A witness, who asked to remain anonymous, said he heard the shots coming from inside the base.<\/p>\n
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria, the meeting came as part of an “American strategy to strengthen its presence and foothold in the Syrian desert”.<\/p>\n
Helicopters evacuated the wounded to the Al-Tanf base in southern Syria, where American troops are deployed, SANA said.<\/p>\n
Last month, during Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington, Damascus formally joined the US-led global coalition against the IS group.<\/p>\n
US forces are deployed in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast as well as at Al-Tanf near the border with Jordan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two US troops and an interpreter were killed in central Syria after an alleged member of the Islamic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-190288","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\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}