Two American troops and a civilian interpreter were killed in central Syria on Saturday after an alleged member of the Islamic State (IS) group opened fire on a joint US-Syrian patrol, officials said.<\/p>\n
“We mourn the loss of three Great American Patriots in Syria,” US President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social platform, vowing “very serious retaliation.”<\/p>\n
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the attack took place in Palmyra, home to UNESCO-listed ancient ruins and once controlled by the IS group — also known as ISIS — during the height of its territorial expansion in Syria.<\/p>\n
The deadly attack had been “an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman,” who was “engaged and killed,” US Central Command said on X.<\/p>\n
Trump called it “an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them.”<\/p>\n
Three other wounded US troops were “doing well,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
The soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counterterrorism operations when the attack occurred, Parnell said, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US\u2013Syrian government patrol”.<\/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
Trump said Syria’s new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who visited the White House last month, was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”<\/p>\n
Syria’s foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani said in a post on X that Damascus “strongly condemns the terrorist attack that targeted a joint Syria-US counterterrorism patrol near Palmyra”.<\/p>\n
“We extend our condolences to the families of the victims, as well as to the American government and people, and wish the wounded a speedy recovery.”<\/p>\n
– ‘Infiltration’ –<\/p>\n
A Syrian military official who requested anonymity said 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
However, a Pentagon official speaking on the condition of anonymity told AFP the attack “took place in an area where the Syrian President does not have control.”<\/p>\n
In an interview on state television, Syrian Interior Ministry spokesman Anwar al-Baba said there had been “prior warnings from the internal security command to allied forces in the desert region” of a potential IS “infiltration”.<\/p>\n
“The international coalition forces did not take the Syrian warnings of a possible IS infiltration into consideration,” he said.<\/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
The official SANA news agency reported that helicopters evacuated the wounded to the Al-Tanf base in southern Syria, where American troops are deployed as part of the Washington-led global coalition against the IS group.<\/p>\n
Last month, during al-Sharaa’s historic visit to Washington, Damascus formally joined the coalition.<\/p>\n
IS seized swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014 during Syria’s civil war, before being territorially defeated in the country five years later.<\/p>\n
Its fighters still maintain a presence, however, particularly in Syria’s vast desert.<\/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 American troops and a civilian interpreter were killed in central Syria on Saturday after an alleged member…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-183459","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\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}