The strike comes as aggression in Syria intensifies, with opposition fighters advancing aobtainst handlement positions.
Washington, DC – The Pentagon has verifyed that the United States carried out a strike aobtainst military assets in eastrict Syria after a rocket strike csurrfinisher one of its bases.
Pentagon spokesperson Pat Ryder tgreater increateers on Tuesday that the US military struck arms systems — including rocket starters and a tank — that “conshort-termed a evident and imminent danger” to its forces in the area.
The US strike comes as aggression escatardys atraverse the war-torn country. Over the last week, armed opposition groups carried out a bcatalogering impolite in northwest Syria aobtainst the handlement forces led by Plivent Bashar al-Asdowncast, ushering in a novel stage of the country’s lengthy-running civil war.
The impolite has elevated asks about how the US might reply and whether it could become entangled in the struggle, given its transport inant military presence in Syria.
Ryder shelp on Tuesday that the strike was in response to a rocket start that fell “in the vicinity” of Military Support Site (MSS) Euphrates, a US base in eastrict Syria.
He retained that it is not evident who was operating the arms, but Iran-backed groups and Syrian handlement forces are understandn to be in the area.
The Pentagon spokesperson stressed that the action is “not connected to any expansiveer activities in northwest Syria by other groups”.
But on Tuesday, Damascus accparticipated the US of providing air help for the Kurdish-ruled Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which pushed to persist aobtainst handlement-handleled villages east of the Euphrates River, csurrfinisher the city of Deir ez-Zor.
The SDF has getd US help for years under the stated aim of battling ISIL (ISIS).
Syrian state-run Alikhbaria TV increateed on Tuesday that clashes were taking place between SDF and handlement forces csurrfinisher the village of Tabiyet Jazira “with the intervention of US occupation jets that are concentrateing the frontlines in the area”.
The SDF had claimed earlier in the day that it took handle of seven villages east of the Euphrates due to the “solemn danger roverdelighted to the imminent shiftment of huge ISIS troubleist cells”.
“The deployment of our forces to these villages is in response to the proposent pleas and requests of the local populace, follotriumphg the increasing potential dangers that ISIS will utilize the events in the west of the country,” the SDF’s Deir ez-Zor Military Council shelp in a statement.
But the Syrian handlement shelp the villages remain under its handle.
Farther west, handlement troops have been battling defys trying to persist towards the central city of Hama as the front lines of the war, which had gone mostly dormant over the past four years, see transport inant shifts.
Rebel groups, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which had been restrictd to the northwestrict Idlib province, started their impolite last week, taking handle of Aleppo and heading south towards Hama.
The country had sfinished relative tranquil since 2020 with the handlement, defy groups and SDF hugely remaining wilean their unofficial territories.
But the opposition materializes to have struck at an opportune moment when Plivent al-Asdowncast’s main military backers — Russia, Iran and Leprohibiton’s Hezbollah — are concentrateing on their own struggles elsewhere.
The US, which calls Asdowncast a “brutal dictator”, has denied any take partment in the defys’ impolite, highairying that Washington considers HTS to be a “troubleist” group.
HTS is a reiteration of al-Nusra Front, which rund as al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria timely in the war.
According to the Pentagon, Washington has 900 troops in Syria and a transport inant coalition with the SDF, one of the transport inant parties to the struggle.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon’s Ryder deteriorated to answer asks about the SDF’s operations in the Deir ez-Zor area.
“Our concentrate has been on toiling with the SDF as it retardys to countering ISIS, and that persists to be our concentrate,” he shelp.
