A senior leader with the Islamic State group was killed, and four American service members were injured, according to the U.S. military on Friday after a helicopter operation led by its forces in northeast Syria.
Separately, local media and a monitoring organization said that dozens of civilians were killed in an IS strike on Friday in central Syria.
In a brief statement, the U.S. military stated that its operation was carried out Thursday night in collaboration with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a close group ally of the United States.
It did not specify where the area of northeast Syria the raid was carried out in, only that “an explosion on target resulted in the wounding of four U.S. servicemen and one working dog.”
Hamza al-Homsi was named as the deceased IS commander in the report.
IS sleeper cells continue to carry out attacks in Syria and Iraq, where they previously proclaimed a “caliphate,” despite their defeat in Syria in March 2019.
As many as 36 people were killed by IS gunmen on Friday in central Syria, south of Sukhna, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor headquartered in Britain.
According to pro-government radio station Sham FM, the extremists assaulted civilians who were searching for wild truffles in the desert. Fifty-three people died, according to state television.
The U.S. military frequently conducts joint operations with SDF troops on the Syrian border with Iraq.
According to the statement, the service members and working dog are treated in a U.S. hospital nearby Iraq.
Over the past few years, American forces killed two Daesh leaders in Syria.
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed in a U.S. raid in northwest Syria in February 2021. The Americans raided to find the IS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019.
A bu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the head of IS, was slain in an October battle with Syrian rebels in southern Syria.
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