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US President Donald Trump said “there will be very serious retaliation” on Saturday, after two US service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that Washington blames on the Islamic State group.
“This was an ISIS attack against the US and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria that they do not fully control,” he said in a social media post.
Trump told reporters at the White House that Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened,” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside US troops. Trump, in his post, also pointed out that al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
US Central Command said three service members were wounded in an ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. The US military said the gunman was killed.
The attack on US troops in Syria was the first with fatalities since the fall of President Bashar Assad a year ago.
The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the civilian killed was a US interpreter and that the attack targeted soldiers involved in the ongoing counter-terrorism operations in the region.
Syrian authorities are investigating the gunman
The shooting took place near historic Palmrya, according to the state-run SANA news agency, which earlier said two members of Syria’s security force and several US service members had been wounded. The casualties were taken by helicopter to a garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force. Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesman Nour al-Din al-Baba said a gunman linked to IS opened fire at the gate of a military post. He added that Syrian authorities are looking into whether the gunman was an IS member or only carried its extreme ideology, as he denied reports that suggested that the attacker was a security member.
“US will ruthlessly kill you”
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X:
“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.”
The US still has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting IS. Washington had no diplomatic relations with Syria under Assad, but ties have warmed since Al-Sharaa took power. Al-Sharaa also made a historic visit to Washington last month, where he held talks with Trump, marking the first White House visit by a Syrian head of state since Syria gained independence from France in 1946.