DAMASCUS, Syria\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump said Saturday that \u201cthere will be very serious retaliation\u201d after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in a Syria attack that the U.S. blames on the militant group Islamic State.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,\u201d Trump said in a social media post.<\/p>\n
The president told reporters at the White House that Syria\u2019s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was \u201cdevastated by what happened\u201d and emphasized that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said Al-Sharaa was \u201cextremely angry and disturbed by this attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two service members killed were members of the Iowa National Guard, according to a person briefed on the situation who was granted anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly.<\/p>\n
U.S. Central Command said that in addition to those killed, three American service members were wounded in the ambush Saturday by a lone Islamic State member in central Syria. Trump said the three \u201cseem to be doing pretty well.\u201d The U.S. military said the gunman was killed.<\/p>\n
The attack on U.S. troops in Syria is the first with fatalities since the fall of President Bashar Assad a year ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be very serious retaliation,\u201d Trump said on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon\u2019s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the civilian killed was a U.S. interpreter. Parnell said the attack targeted soldiers involved in the ongoing counter-terrorism operations in the region and is being investigated. <\/p>\n
The shooting took place near historic Palmyra, according to the state-run SANA news agency, which earlier said two members of Syria\u2019s security force and several U.S. service members had been wounded. The casualties were taken by helicopter to the Al-Tanf garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.<\/p>\n
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.<\/p>\n
Syria\u2019s Interior Ministry spokesman Nour al-Din al-Baba said a gunman linked to Islamic State opened fire at the gate of a military post. He said Syrian authorities are looking into whether the gunman was an Islamic State member or only espoused its extreme ideology. <\/p>\n
After initially denying reports that the attacker belonged to the Syrian security forces, Al-Baba acknowledged that the assailant was an internal security force member in the desert. He added that the attacker \u201cdid not have any command post\u201d within the forces nor was he a bodyguard for the force commander.<\/p>\n
Al-Baba added in an interview with state TV that some 5,000 members have joined the internal security forces in the desert and they get evaluated on a weekly basis. Three days ago, an evaluation of the attacker determined he might have extreme ideology, Al-Baba said, and a decision about him was expected to be issued Sunday but \u201cthe attack occurred on a Saturday, which is a day off for state institutions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X: \u201cLet it be known, if you target Americans \u2014 anywhere in the world \u2014 you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
The U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Syria under Assad, but ties have warmed since the fall of the five-decade Assad family rule. Al-Sharaa, the interim president, made a historic visit to Washington last month for talks with Trump. It was the first White House visit by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946 and came after the U.S. lifted sanctions imposed on Syria during the Assads\u2019 rule.<\/p>\n
Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled Bashar Assad in December 2024 and was named the country\u2019s interim leader in January. Al-Sharaa once had ties to Al Qaeda and had a $10-million U.S. bounty on his head.<\/p>\n
Last month, Syria joined the international coalition fighting against Islamic State as Damascus improves its relations with Western countries following Assad\u2019s ouster.<\/p>\n
Islamic State was defeated on the battlefield in Syria in 2019, but the group\u2019s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in the country. The United Nations says the group has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters remaining in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n
U.S. troops, who have maintained a presence in different parts of Syria \u2014 including Al-Tanf garrison in the central province of Homs \u2014 to train other forces as part of a broad campaign against the group, have been targeted in the past. One of the deadliest attacks occurred in 2019 in the northern town of Manbij when a blast killed two U.S. service members and two American civilians as well as others from Syria while conducting a patrol.<\/p>\n
Kassabali, Mroue and Kim write for the Associated Press and reported from Damascus, Beirut and Washington, respectively. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAMASCUS, Syria\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump said Saturday that \u201cthere will be very serious retaliation\u201d after two U.S. service members and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[51597,51594,51598,1794,14145,33595,51593,48,52,51,9925,51596,47,50,49,1459,51599,51600,51592,2281,51595],"class_list":["post-93777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ambush","tag-american-civilian","tag-assad","tag-attack","tag-coalition","tag-iraq","tag-islamic-state-group","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-month","tag-lone-member","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-part","tag-relation","tag-security-force","tag-syria","tag-u-s","tag-u-s-service-member"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}