{"id":359455,"date":"2025-12-20T05:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T05:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/359455\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T05:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T05:48:07","slug":"us-carries-out-massive-strike-against-is-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/359455\/","title":{"rendered":"US carries out ‘massive’ strike against IS in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US says its military has carried out a “massive strike” against the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria, in response to a deadly attack on American forces in the country.<\/p>\n

The US Central Command (Centcom) said fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery “struck more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria”. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.<\/p>\n

It said the operation “employed more than 100 precision munitions” targeting known IS infrastructure and weapons sites.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump said “we are striking very strongly” against IS strongholds, following the 13 December IS ambush in the city of Palmyra in which two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter were killed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a statement on X, Centcom, which directs American military operations in Europe, Africa and the Indo-Pacific, said Operation Hawkeye Strike was launched at 16:00 Eastern Time (21:00 GMT) on Friday.<\/p>\n

Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper said that the US “will continue to relentlessly pursue terrorists who seek to harm Americans and our partners across the region”.<\/p>\n

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the operation “is not the beginning of a war – it is a declaration of vengeance. <\/p>\n

“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

“Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue,” the US defence secretary added.<\/p>\n

Posting on Truth Social, President Trump said the US “is inflicting very serious retaliation, just as I promised, on the murderous terrorists responsible”.<\/p>\n

He said the Syrian government was “fully in support”.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OBHR) said IS positions near the cities of Raqqa and Deir ez Zor were targeted.<\/p>\n

It said that a prominent IS leader and a number of fighters were killed.<\/p>\n

IS has not publicly commented. The BBC was unable to verify the targets immediately.<\/p>\n

Centcom earlier said that the deadly attack in Palmyra was carried out by an IS gunman, who was “engaged and killed”.<\/p>\n

Another three US soldiers were injured in the ambush, with a Pentagon official saying that it happened “in an area where the Syrian president does not have control.”<\/p>\n

At the same time, the SOHR said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security forces.<\/p>\n

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the identity of the gunman has not been released.<\/p>\n

In 2019, a US-backed alliance of Syrian fighters announced IS had lost the last pocket of territory in Syria it controlled, <\/a>but since then the jihadist group has carried out some attacks.<\/p>\n

The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n

US troops have maintained a presence in Syria since 2015 to help train other forces as part of a campaign against IS.<\/p>\n

Syria has recently joined an international coalition to combat IS and has pledged to co-operate with the US.<\/p>\n

In November, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa – a former jihadist leader whose coalition forces toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024 – met Trump at the White House, describing his visit as part of a “new era” for the two countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US says its military has carried out a “massive strike” against the Islamic State group (IS) in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-359455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359455","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=359455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}