Two US soldiers, interpreter killed in ISIS ambush in Syria, Pentagon says

WASHINGTON — Two US Army soldiers and an American military interpreter were killed, and three other US troops were wounded, in what the Pentagon said was an ambush near the Syrian city of Palmyra on Saturday.

The incident, which the Pentagon’s US Central Command attributed to “an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman,” marked the deadliest attack on American troops in Syria since at least 2019.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, US President Donald Trump said that despite the deaths of three US personnel in the attack in Syria today, the other three wounded US troops “seem to be doing pretty well.”

“This was an ISIS attack on us and Syria,” Trump said. “We will retaliate.”

The attacker “was killed by partner forces,” a reference to local Syrian militias armed and trained by the United States, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a post on the X platform.

The incident occurred during a “key leader engagement” in the Syrian city of Palmyra, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement. “Their mission was in support of ongoing ISIS / counter-terrorism operations in the region,” Parnell’s statement read. 

A US official speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said the attack occurred amid a planned meeting with representatives of Syria’s Ministry of Interior. The gunman, the official said, had worked for the ministry's security forces "at some point," and was believed to be under investigation for ideological links to ISIS, the US official said.

Nour Eddin al-Baba, a spokesperson for Syria's Interior Ministry in Damascus, said the attacker had been part of the government’s security forces, but that he had no ties to its leadership and was not part of the government's escort for the meeting in Palmyra.

Baba further told Al-Ikhbariyya television news that the attacker had been discovered on Dec. 10 to "possess 'takfiri' or extremist ideas," and that a decision on the investigation into him had been set for Sunday, the first day of the normal business week in Syria. "But by the fate dictated by God, the attack occurred on Saturday," he said. 

The Syrian government is currently investigating whether he had ties to ISIS, he said.

It remains unclear how the attacker was able to approach US forces. The soldiers killed and wounded in the incident were members of the Iowa National Guard, another US official told Al-Monitor.

SANA reported that US military helicopters evacuated wounded American troops to the US military’s main base of operations at the Al-Tanf garrison, which lies roughly 75 miles by air south of Palmyra, on Syria’s remote southern desert border with Iraq and Jordan. 

Palmyra lies in the country’s southern desert, known as the Badia, which remains a stubborn hotspot of ISIS activity more than six years after the insurgent group was driven underground by combined US and Syrian forces.

Control of the city changed hands several times during Syria’s 14-year civil war, but fell under the influence of militias aligned with the Syrian Ministry of Defense based in Damascus since the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024.

The attack comes at a sensitive time for the US military’s involvement in Syria, more than a decade after former President Barack Obama authorized the Pentagon to destroy the group.

The Pentagon quietly paused its planned drawdown of US troops to a smaller footprint in Syria earlier this year amid concerns about the stability of the country following the December 2024 overthrow of the Assad regime by Islamist rebels.

Trump twice during his first term in office suddenly ordered the full withdrawal of all American troops from Syria, setting off a scramble within Washington’s top national security echelons to limit the anticipated fallout as rival factions rushed to fill the void.

“I can tell you that President Trump is very, very concerned about the security of our men and women that are out in the field,” US Sen. James Risch (R-Ida.), chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, said in June when asked by Al-Monitor about the planned US drawdown.

More than 9,000 ISIS prisoners remain in limbo in makeshift camps in areas controlled by US-backed Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria. Top US officials, including CENTCOM commander US Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, have urged foreign governments to accelerate the trickle of repatriations of their citizens from the ISIS detention camps.

Saturday’s incident in Palmyra remains under investigation by CENTCOM, US officials said. Pentagon officials are withholding information about the soldiers involved until next-of-kin are notified.