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
dur-des\/sbk\/acb<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. “We mourn the loss of three Great American Patriots in Syria,” US President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social platform, vowing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[95,125,144],"class_list":["post-20893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional","tag-conflict","tag-syria","tag-us-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20896,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20893\/revisions\/20896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}