rekindled the country’s ties with the US<\/a>.<\/p>\nSyrian 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
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 injured US troops were “doing well,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
![\"US](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4JWMMWB_AFP__20251208__87GU6AU__v1__MidRes__UsPoliticsTrump_jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nUS President Donald Trump has vowed “very serious retaliation” in response to the attack. File photo.
\nPhoto: AFP \/ Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\n<\/p>\n
The soldiers were taking part in a “joint field tour” in Palmyra, which was once under the control of the IS group, SANA reported.<\/p>\n
Many of the city’s renowned ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were destroyed when the IS group controlled the area a decade ago.<\/p>\n
‘Infiltration’<\/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
However, a Pentagon official speaking on the condition of anonymity told AFP that 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
SANA reported that helicopters had 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 Syrian President Ahmed 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, however, still maintain a presence, 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
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maher Al Mounes and Daniel Stublen, AFP US troops patrol Syria’s Hasakah province on 14 June 2023.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-182624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}