ADDS SYRIAN MINISTER, BARRACK STATEMENTS
By Rania Abu Shamala
ISTANBUL (AA) - Two US troops and a civilian were killed and three other service members were injured in an ambush by an ISIS (Daesh) gunman in Syria, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said Saturday.
“On Dec. 13, two US service members and one US civilian were killed, and three service members were injured, as a result of an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman in Syria,” CENTCOM said in a statement on the US social media company X.
“The gunman was engaged and killed,” it added.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the civilian who was killed was a US interpreter.
Syrian Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba told state-run TV channel Alikhbaria that the internal security directorate had issued “prior warnings to partner forces in the Badiya region about the possibility of breaches or anticipated attacks by ISIS.”
He said that international coalition forces “did not take the Syrian warnings about a potential ISIS breach into account.”
The spokesperson said a gunmen affiliated with ISIS opened fire at the entrance of a security headquarters in the Palmyra desert area.
Authorities “are verifying whether the attacker had direct links to the ISIS group or merely held its ideology,” he added.
“The attacker did not have any ties within the internal security forces and was not an escort to the leadership,” he said.
Media reports earlier reported that two Syrian security personnel were also injured in the attack.
US Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack condemned the attack as a “cowardly terrorist ambush.”
“We mourn the loss of three brave US service members and civilian personnel and wish a speedy recovery to the Syrian troops wounded in the attack,” Barrack said on US social media company X.
“We remain committed to defeating terrorism with our Syrian partners.”
Barrack described the attack as “a stark and outrageous reminder that terrorism remains a vicious and persistent threat, capable of striking even as we work to eradicate it,” in a separate statement on X. “A limited number of U.S. forces remain deployed in Syria solely to finish the job of defeating ISIS once and for all, preventing its resurgence, and protecting the American homeland from terrorist attacks,” he said.
The US “presence empowers capable local Syrian partners to take the fight to these terrorists on the ground, ensuring that American forces do not have to engage in another costly, large-scale war in the Middle East,” said Barrack. “We will not waver in this mission until ISIS is utterly destroyed, and any attack on Americans will be met with swift and unrelenting justice.”
The US welcomes “the strong commitment of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who shares our ironclad resolve to identify, pursue, and hold accountable the perpetrators of this attack. Together we will eradicate terrorism in Syria,” Barrack added.
Asaad al-Shaibani, Syrian foreign minister, wrote on X: “Syria strongly condemns the terrorist attack targeting a joint Syrian–American counterterrorism patrol near Palmyra.”
“We extend our condolences to the families of the victims and to the U.S. government and people, and wish the wounded a swift recovery,” he added.
US forces operate in Syria as part of an international coalition against ISIS, which was formed under US leadership in 2014. Syria joined the coalition Nov. 12, 2025.
The coalition has carried out military operations against ISIS in Syria and Iraq since its formation, involving several countries, though Damascus was not previously a party to it.
Since the overthrow of the former regime of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Syria’s new administration has been seeking to restore security and stabilize conditions across the country.