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U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the attack was a “declaration of revenge” and that “many” combatants were killed.
A week after two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter were killed in the Syrian city of Palmyra, President Donald Trump said the U.S. military is “very seriously attacking ISIS (ISIL) strongholds in Syria.”
“As ISIS brutally murdered brave American patriots in Syria…I hereby announce that the United States is taking very serious retaliation against these responsible murderous terrorists, as promised,” President Trump posted on his Truth social platform on Friday.
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President Trump said the Syrian government, which took office after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime at the end of 2024, “fully supports” the U.S. military operation.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry also reiterated its commitment to the fight against ISIL and “calls on the United States and United Nations member states to support these efforts.”
“The Syrian Arab Republic reiterates its firm determination to fight ISIS and ensure that it has no safe haven within Syrian territory, and will continue to intensify military operations against ISIS wherever it poses a threat,” the ministry said in a statement shared with X early Saturday.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier said US forces were targeting “ISIS fighters, infrastructure and weapons sites,” adding that the attack was dubbed Operation Hawkeye Strike.
“This is not the start of a war. This is a declaration of revenge,” Hegseth said in a social media post. “Today we hunted and killed the enemy. We killed a lot of the enemy. And we will continue.”
Two US officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the airstrikes were against dozens of ISIL targets across central Syria.
Details about the number of people injured or killed were not immediately available.
US attacks targets in Syria with ‘fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery’
The U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for operations in the Middle East, said it had deployed “fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery” to fire “more than 100 precision munitions targeting known ISIS infrastructure and weapons sites,” but did not provide details on locations or casualties.
CENTCOM also said that “Jordanian forces also supported with fighter jets.”
Al Jazeera’s Roziland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said the Syrian government appears to have “approved” the US operation.
“While we do not know whether the Syrian Defense Forces are participating in this retaliatory action, the United States believes it is important to help Syria break away from the long-standing dictatorship of the Assad regime,” Jordan said.
“To that end, eliminating those who the United States considers to be a national security threat – members of ISIL – is part of helping Syria take the next step as a sovereign nation,” she said.
“The Trump administration has spent significant efforts in recent weeks to strengthen the government of new interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, and attempting to distance ISIL from civilian and military targets in Syria as it seeks to rebuild the government and civil society is certainly an important operation,” she added.
According to the U.S. military, three Americans, two U.S. National Guard members and a civilian interpreter, were shot dead by an assailant who targeted a convoy of American and Syrian troops in the central Syrian town of Palmyra over the weekend.
Three American soldiers were also injured in the attack, which the United States blamed on ISIL and vowed to retaliate.
About 1,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Syria as part of a multiyear operation targeting ISIL remnants in the region.
The US-led coalition has also carried out airstrikes and ground operations targeting ISIL suspects in Syria in recent months, often involving Syrian security forces.
The Syrian government is cooperating with the US-led fight against ISIL, and an agreement on cooperation was reached when President Al-Shallah met with President Trump at the White House last month.
