According to the US Central Command, two US soldiers and an American civilian were killed and three other US soldiers were injured in an ambush by an Islamic State (IS) gunman in central Syria on Saturday.In a post on “Two U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian were killed and three soldiers were injured as a result of an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman in Syria. The gunman was attacked and killed,” the statement said.The attack is the first incident to cause U.S. casualties in Syria since the overthrow of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a year ago. CENTCOM said that in accordance with War Department policy, the identities of the deceased service members would be kept secret for 24 hours until their next of kin were notified.Syrian state media SANA reported that shots were fired at Syrian and American forces, injuring several people. The injured were evacuated by helicopter to the US-run al-Tanf garrison near the Syria-Iraq-Jordanian border. SANA said the attacker was killed, without giving further details.A U.S. defense official told the AP that authorities were aware of the incident but could not provide immediate information. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least three Syrian security forces were also injured and provided a different account of the attacker’s identity.The US maintains hundreds of troops in eastern and central Syria as part of an international coalition against IS. Although the group was territorially defeated in 2019, the United Nations estimates it still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters operating through sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq.US troops stationed in places such as al-Tanf have been targeted in the past. One of the deadliest such attacks occurred in Manbij in 2019, when a bomb attack killed two US soldiers and two American civilians while on patrol.
