Two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter have been killed in Syria in an ambush by an Islamic State gunman, the US Central Command has said.<\/p>\n
Officials said three other service members were injured in the attack, during which the gunman was “engaged and killed”.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump wrote on social media that it was “an ISIS attack” against the US and Syria and said there would be “a very serious retaliation”.<\/p>\n
The identities of those killed are being withheld for 24 hours until their next of kin have been informed, the US Central Command said.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, the US Central Command said the attack was “the result of an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman”, while a Pentagon official said initial assessments showed the attack was “likely” to be carried out by the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.<\/p>\n
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the identity of the gunman has not been released.<\/p>\n
The ambush occurred in Palmyra, located in the centre of the country, while the soldiers were “conducting a key leader engagement”, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.<\/p>\n
A Pentagon official said: “This attack took place in an area where the Syrian president does not have control.”<\/p>\n
Trump added that the three injured US soldiers were “doing well”. Syria’s state news reported that two Syrian service personnel had also been injured.<\/p>\n
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said: “Let it be known, 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
Syria recently joined an international coalition to combat IS and has pledged to co-operate with the US.<\/p>\n
Last month, President Ahmed al-Sharaa met with Donald Trump at the White House in a visit that the Syrian leader said was part of a “new era” for the two countries.<\/p>\n
The global coalition is aimed at eliminating the remaining elements of the so-called Islamic State and stemming the flow of foreign militants to the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, said: “I strongly condemn the cowardly terrorist ambush targeting a joint US\u2013Syrian government patrol in central Syria.<\/p>\n
“We remain committed to defeating terrorism with our Syrian partners.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter have been killed in Syria in an ambush by an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-347093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}