WASHINGTON: US and allied forces carried out “large-scale” strikes against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Syria on Saturday, the US military said, the latest response to an attack last month that killed three Americans.
US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees American military forces in the region, said multiple strikes “targeted ISIS throughout Syria,” using an acronym for the terrorist group.
Centcom’s post on X did not give specifics on where they took place.
Grainy aerial video accompanying the post showed several separate explosions, apparently in rural areas.
The strikes were part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, which was launched “in direct response to the deadly ISIS attack on US and Syrian forces in Palmyra,” Centcom said.
Two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter were killed on December 13 after a lone gunman — whom Washington described as an IS militant — ambushed them in Palmyra.
Syria’s interior ministry later said the gunman was a member of the security forces who had been set to be fired for extremism.
“We will never forget, and never relent,” US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Saturday in a post on X, replying to the Centcom statement.
The United States and Jordan carried out a round of strikes last month in response to the Palmyra attack, with Centcom saying at the time that “more than 70 targets” had been hit.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, later reported those strikes killed at least five IS members, including a cell leader.
On January 3, Britain and France announced joint strikes targeting an underground facility they said IS had likely used to store weapons.
The US personnel targeted in Palmyra were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the international effort to combat IS, which seized swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014.
The IS members were ultimately defeated by local ground forces backed by international air strikes and other support, but the IS still has a presence in Syria, especially in the country’s vast desert.
US President Donald Trump has long been sceptical of Washington’s presence in Syria, ordering the withdrawal of troops during his first term but ultimately leaving American forces in the country.
The Pentagon announced in April that the United States would halve the number of US personnel in Syria in the following months, while US envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said in June that Washington would eventually reduce its bases in the country to one.
Syria govt forces detain 300 Kurds, evacuate 400 fighters from Aleppo
Meanwhile, Syrian government forces evacuated more than 400 Kurdish fighters from the last district in Aleppo to fall to the army and detained 300 Kurds, an interior ministry official told AFP on Sunday.
Kurdish forces said the combatants were evacuated “through the mediation of international parties to stop the attacks and violations against our people in Aleppo”.
The two sides clashed in Aleppo city earlier this week, after negotiations to integrate the Kurds into the country’s new government stalled.
The ministry official, who requested anonymity, said that 419 fighters, including 59 wounded and an unspecified number of “killed” were transferred from the Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood to the Kurds’ de facto autonomous zone in the northeast.
An AFP correspondent saw buses filled with men leaving Sheikh Maqsud under escort by government forces during the night.
The official added that 300 other Kurds, including fighters, have been arrested.
On Saturday, an AFP correspondent saw dozens of young men in civilian clothing seated on the ground and guarded by security forces, before they were transported to an unknown location.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that 300 “young Kurds” had been arrested, stating that they were “civilians, not fighters”.
In the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli in the northeast, hundreds of people gathered for the arrival of the wounded, according to AFP correspondents on the ground.
