FIRST US TROOPS KILLED IN SYRIA IN A YEAR
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.
Syrian 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.
The soldiers were taking part in a “joint field tour” in Palmyra, which was once under the control of the IS group, SANA reported.
Many of the city’s renowned ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were destroyed when the IS group controlled the area a decade ago.
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.
A witness, who asked to remain anonymous, said he heard the shots coming from inside the base.
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.”
“POTENTIAL IS INFILTRATION”
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.”
“The international coalition forces did not take the Syrian warnings of a possible IS infiltration into consideration,” he said.
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”.
SANA reported that helicopters had evacuated the wounded to the Al-Tanf base in southern Syria, where US troops are deployed as part of the Washington-led global coalition against the IS group.
Last month, during Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s historic visit to Washington, Damascus formally joined the coalition.
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.
Its fighters, however, still maintain a presence, particularly in Syria’s vast desert.
US forces are deployed in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast as well as at Al-Tanf near the border with Jordan.
Source: CNA
