A senior U.S. official confirmed in a statement Saturday that multiple U.S. service members were injured in an ambush-style attack in central Syria. In a statement to Fox News, the official added that some of the injuries were serious.
Two local Syrian officials had earlier told Reuters that a convoy of U.S. and Syrian security forces came under fire in the ancient city of Palmyra. The convoy was conducting operations against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants in the region.
The Department of War had told Fox News that “we are aware of reports,” but added that it had “nothing additional to provide at this time.”
“The United States, CIA and military forces are reportedly deeply involved in securing and stabilizing the situation in Syria,” Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, recently told the outlet.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that at least one gunman was killed after the convoy returned fire. The report added that two Syrian security personnel were injured in the attack, while an unnamed U.S. official told Reuters that upwards of four U.S. service members were also injured.
The injured soldiers were evacuated by helicopter to a nearby airbase, the official added.
As of June, there were about 1,500 U.S. service members deployed to Syria following withdrawals and consolidations ordered by the Pentagon. That number was expected to drop to a few hundred at some point this year, while U.S. forces maintain a presence at the Al-Tanf air base near the Jordanian border.
That base and others were established to combat ISIS during the group’s territorial peak in 2015, and have remained to battle ISIS remnants in the Syrian desert. Despite not holding significant territory, the group has continuously carried out attacks against the beleaguered Syrian government, which was formed by former Jihadists and other Syrian opposition groups after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad last year.
While President Donald Trump has expressed his desire to fully withdraw from Syria in the past, the State Department has partnered with regional powers in order to support the nation’s fledgling government and stop human rights abuses — including massacres against the nation’s Alawaite, Druze and Christian populations — committed by some of its more radical factions.
“We don’t have an embassy in Syria. It’s operating out of Türkiye. But we need to help them. We want to help that government succeed because the alternative is full-scale civil war and chaos, which would of course destabilize the entire region,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers this past June.
U.S. forces have been killed by ISIS militants while on patrol in Syria in the past.
On January 16, 2019, a suicide bomber claimed by ISIS detonated an explosive vest outside a popular restaurant in Manbij, northern Syria, targeting a U.S. military patrol during a routine engagement. The attack killed four Americans — two service members, one Department of Defense civilian, and one contractor — along with several locals and allied fighters, marking the deadliest incident for U.S. forces in Syria since their deployment began in 2015.
