The U.S. military said that on Monday it killed two ISIS operatives in an airstrike as they moved a truckload of weapons in an area of Syria previously controlled by the Assad regime.
U.S. Central Command said in a statement on the X platform that its forces conducted the successful precision airstrike on Dec. 23 in the Dayr az Zawr Province, Syria.
In addition to the two ISIS operatives killed, another was wounded, CENTCOM
said of ongoing efforts to “disrupt and degrade efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against civilians and military personnel from the U.S., our allies, and our partners throughout the region and beyond.”
Four days earlier CENTCOM confirmed it had killed ISIS leader Abu Yusif with a precision strike in the same province.
CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla
said after the successful strike that ISIS leadership was working to take advantage of the political instability in Syria following the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad after more than a decade of civil war.
“ISIS has the intent to break out of detention the over 8,000 ISIS operatives currently being held in facilities in Syria,” Kurilla said.
“We will aggressively target these leaders and operatives, including those trying to conduct operations external to Syria.”
Following Assad’s fall, national leadership in Syria appears poised to be led by the Sunni Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is currently designated as a terrorist organization due to its historic ties to al-Qaeda.
HTS took over the running of an interim government in Syria on Dec. 10 following their lightning incursion.
The United States recently
withdrew its active $10 million bounty payment on its leader, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa—a decision that came following a State Department visit to Syria in which the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara A. Leaf said that Sharaa “came across as pragmatic,” and noted public statements that the group would respect the “protection of equal rights for all communities.”
But Leaf pressed, “We will judge by deeds, not just by words.”
According to the Pentagon, there are
2,000 U.S. service members on the ground in Syria, more than twice as many as the 900 previously stated.
Andrew Thornebrooke contributed to this report.
