Two US service members and one American civilian have been killed and several other people wounded in an ambush on Saturday by the Islamic State group in central Syria, the US Central Command said.
The attack on US troops is the first to inflict casualties since the fall of the former Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, a year ago.
Central Command said in a post on the social media platform X that as a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with defense department policy, the identities of the service members “will be withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified”.
Syria’s state media and a war monitor reported earlier on Saturday that shots were fired at Syrian and US forces on Saturday during a visit by American troops to a historic central town.
The shooting took place near Palmyra, according to the state-run Sana news agency, which said two members of Syria’s security force and several US service members were wounded. The injured were taken by helicopters to the al-Tanf garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.
Sana said the attacker was killed, without providing further details.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.
The US has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting the Islamic State.
Last month, Syria joined the international coalition fighting against the Islamic State as Damascus improves its relations with western countries following last year’s fall of Assad when insurgents captured his seat of power.
The US had no diplomatic relations with Syria under Assad, but ties have warmed since the fall of the five-decade family rule. The interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Islamist militant, made a historic visit to Washington last month, where he held talks with Donald Trump.
The Islamic State was defeated in Syria in 2019 but the group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in the country. The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.
US troops, which have maintained a presence in different parts of Syria – including the al-Tanf garrison in the central province of Homs – to train other forces as part of a broad campaign against the Islamic State, have been targeted in the past. One of the deadliest attacks occurred in 2019 in the northern town of Manbij, when a blast killed two US service members and two American civilians as well as others from Syria while they were conducting a patrol.