The Pentagon said on Tuesday that U.S. forces in Syria were compelled to conduct a “self-defense” strike against rocket launchers, mortars, and at least one tank in eastern Syria, where a jihadi insurgent group is fighting the Syrian government.
The Pentagon is “still assessing” exactly who was operating the destroyed weapons.
According to Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, American troops based at a location known as Military Support Site Euphrates came under fire from mortars and mobile rocket launchers.
MSS Euphrates responded by destroying three truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers, several mortar emplacements, and a Soviet-made T-64 tank that posted a “clear and imminent threat to U.S. and coalition forces.”
Ryder said both the Syrian military and Iran-backed militia groups are operating in the area and have attacked U.S. positions in the past, so both would be likely suspects for Tuesday’s threat. He confirmed that on November 29, an American A-10 ground-attack warplane was tasked with eliminating a rocket launcher that was about to fire on MSS Euphrates.
Syrian social media videos have depicted at least one A-10 flying low over the city of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding countryside. In one of those videos, the A-10 appeared to perform a defense maneuver and launch countermeasures against a surface threat.
Ryder said the situation at MSS Euphrates was not “linked to any broader activities in northwest Syria by other groups,” a reference to the recent move by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to seize control of several villages from Syrian government control.
“Our focus is on protecting our forces and also preserving our efforts to conduct counter-ISIS operations in partnership with the SDF,” he said.
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Vice President of Research David Adesnik told Voice of America News (VOA) there was a real danger of Islamic State forces regrouping and taking advantage of the chaos unleashed by the offensive in Idlib and Aleppo provinces, which has been led by a different jihadi group, an al-Qaeda offshoot called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Adesnik said American forces have been “keeping the cork in the bottle” against ISIS, which has proven “substantially more effective” in areas controlled by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
“It doesn’t get much coverage, but they are inflicting pain on Assad’s troops,” Adesnik said of Islamic State forces.
An unnamed U.S. official told The War Zone on Tuesday that U.S. forces have responded to requests for assistance from the SDF, but would not detail precisely what assistance was rendered. The source implied the target of the operation was ISIS, seemingly dismissing rumors swirling in Syria that the U.S. has defensively targeted Syrian government forces and their Iran-backed militia allies.
“An SDF operation occurred, they requested support and we supported them,” the official said. “This is not outside our normal capacity.”
“The mission remains unchanged. We are still there to defeat ISIS and that mission remains unchanged,’ the source added.
The War Zone skeptically noted that U.S. officials denied A-10 Warthogs had been deployed until social media lit up with videos of those very warplanes striking unknown targets in Syria.
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