US Vows to Protect Personnel in Syria after Deadly Attack

A view of the al-Tanf base in Syria. (Reuters file photo)
A view of the al-Tanf base in Syria. (Reuters file photo)
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US Vows to Protect Personnel in Syria after Deadly Attack

A view of the al-Tanf base in Syria. (Reuters file photo)
A view of the al-Tanf base in Syria. (Reuters file photo)

The United States on Friday said it would protect its personnel in Syria after the US military carried out air strikes against Iran-backed forces in retaliation for an attack that killed an American contractor and wounded five US troops.

Just a day after the deadly attack on US personnel in Syria, which Washington blamed on a drone of Iranian origin, sources said a US base in Syria's northeast was targeted with a new missile attack. US officials said there were no US casualties in the incident on Friday.

The latest violence could further aggravate already strained relations between Washington and Tehran amid stalled efforts to revive a nuclear deal and Iran's military support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"We're going to work to protect our people and our facilities as best we can. It's a dangerous environment," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on CNN.

Although US forces stationed in Syria have been targeted by drones before, fatalities are rare.

The Pentagon said the US strikes by F-15 jets on Thursday targeted facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the war in Syria, said the US strikes had killed eight pro-Iranian fighters in Syria.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the toll.

Iran's state Press TV, which said no Iranian had been killed in the attack, quoted local sources as denying the target was an Iran-aligned military post, but that a rural development center and a grain center near a military airport had been hit.

"We will always take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing," US Army General Erik Kurilla, who oversees American troops in the Middle East, said in a statement.

The US strikes were in response to an attack earlier on Thursday by a drone against US personnel at a coalition base near Hasakah in northeast Syria.

Three service members and a contractor required medical evacuation to Iraq, where the US-led coalition battling the remnants of ISIS has medical facilities, the Pentagon said.

The other two wounded American troops were treated at the base, it said.

On Friday, the Pentagon said the injured personnel were in stable condition.

New attack ‘ineffective’

A US base at the Al-Omar oil field in Syria was targeted with a missile attack on Friday morning, according to Lebanese pro-Iranian TV channel Al Mayadeen and a security source.

Kirby said that attack was ineffective and there were no US casualties.

It is not uncommon for Iranian-backed groups to lob missiles at US bases in Syria after they are hit with airstrikes.

US forces first deployed into Syria during the Obama administration's campaign against ISIS, partnering with a Kurdish-led group called the Syrian Democratic Forces. About 900 US troops are in Syria, most of them in the eastern party of the country.

US troops have come under attack by Iranian-backed groups about 78 times since the beginning of 2021, according to the US military.

The US deployment, which former President Donald Trump nearly ended in 2018 before softening his withdrawal plans, is a remnant of the larger global war against terrorism that had once included the war in Afghanistan and a far larger US military deployment to Iraq.

While ISIS has lost the swathes of Syria and Iraq it ruled over in 2014, sleeper cells still carry out hit-and-run attacks in desolate areas where neither the US-led coalition nor the Syrian army exert full control.



Israeli Fire Kills 30 in Gaza, Medics Say, as Attention Shifts to Iran 

Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
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Israeli Fire Kills 30 in Gaza, Medics Say, as Attention Shifts to Iran 

Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)

Israeli gunfire and strikes killed at least 30 people across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, local health authorities said, as some Palestinians there said their plight was being forgotten as attention shifted to the air war between Israel and Iran.

The deaths included the latest in near daily killings of Palestinians seeking aid in the three weeks since Israel partially lifted a total blockade on Gaza that it had imposed for almost three months.

Medics said separate airstrikes on homes in the Maghazi refugee camp and Zeitoun neighborhood in central and northern Gaza killed at least 14 people, while five others were killed in an airstrike on a tent encampment in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Eleven others were killed in Israeli fire at crowds of displaced Palestinians awaiting aid trucks brought in by the United Nations along the Salahuddin road in central Gaza, medics said.

The Israel army said it was looking into the reported deaths of people waiting for food. Regarding the other strikes, it said it was "operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities" and "feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm."

On Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry said 397 Palestinians among those trying to get food aid had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since aid deliveries restarted in late May.

Some in Gaza expressed concern that the latest escalations in the war between Israel and Hamas that began in October 2023 would be overlooked as the focus moved to Israel's five-day-old conflict with Iran.

"People are being slaughtered in Gaza, day and night, but attention has shifted to the Iran-Israel war. There is little news about Gaza these days," said Adel, a resident of Gaza City.

"Whoever doesn't die from Israeli bombs dies from hunger. People risk their lives every day to get food, and they also get killed and their blood smears the sacks of flour they thought they had won," he told Reuters via a chat app.

'FORGOTTEN'

Israel has been channeling much of the aid it is now allowing into Gaza through a new US- and Israeli-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces.

It has said it will continue to allow aid into Gaza, home to more than 2 million people, while ensuring aid doesn't get into the hands of Hamas. Hamas denies seizing aid, saying Israel uses hunger as a weapon against the population in Gaza.

The Gaza war was triggered when Hamas-led fighters attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli allies.

US ally Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, displaced almost all the territory's residents, and caused a severe hunger crisis.

The assault has led to accusations of genocide and war crimes, which Israel denies.

Palestinians in Gaza have been closely following Israel's air war with Iran, long a major supporter of Hamas.

"We are maybe happy to see Israel suffer from Iranian rockets, but at the end of the day, one more day in this war costs the lives of tens of innocent people," said 47-year-old Shaban Abed, a father of five from northern Gaza.

"We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten," he said.