American jets, bombers, helicopters and artillery unleashed a wave of strikes across central Syria targeting Islamic State (IS) as the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, vowed vengeance for a deadly attack on US personnel a week earlier.
“This is not the beginning of a war – it is a declaration of vengeance,” Hegseth said. “Today we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.”
The head of US central command claimed Friday’s strikes, backed by Jordanian fighter jets, hit more than 70 targets, including IS weapons sites and infrastructure in the remote central desert regions of the country and parts of eastern Syria, where the jihadist group threatens a resurgence.
In a campaign-style speech shortly after the US attacks began, Donald Trump said that he had “ordered a massive strike on the terrorists that killed our three great patriots last week”. The American president added: “It was very successful. It was precision. We hit every site flawlessly and we are restoring peace through strength all over the world.”
The US strikes followed an attack in the ancient city of Palmyra, central Syria, where two US army soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed and three others wounded when a gunman targeted their convoy before being shot dead.
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The attack – attributed to IS – marked a significant breach in a newfound security alliance between Damascus and Washington in the wake of the downfall of former dictator Bashar al-Assad last year.
Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, recently declared during a visit to the White House that his country would join the internal coalition to fight IS.
Sharaa and many of Syria’s most senior leadership are former members of al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida splinter organisation that later renounced its ties to the terror group. Despite Sharaa’s own jihadist past, he can boast a long history of battles with IS and efforts to prevent it taking hold in the northern province of Idlib, where he once ruled as a warlord.
The US military and Sharaa’s security forces have recently conducted sweeping operations intended to target remnants of IS across Syria.
Even so, concerns persist that extremists, including members of IS, could be hiding in plain sight, having joined the ranks of the new security services in the wake of Assad’s downfall, blending in among former members of al-Nusra Front or other Islamist groups.
Syria’s interior ministry spokesperson, Noureddin al-Baba, said the Palmyra attacker was a member of Syria’s new internal security forces who had been assessed days before the attack as potentially holding extremist views, indicating that he was on the verge of expulsion.
Baba added that the attacker’s online activities were being examined to assess whether he had simply adopted extremist ideology or had clear organisational ties to IS.
Photograph by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images