US launches airstrikes on dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria | Syria
The U.S. military launched 10 strikes on more than 30 Islamic State targets in Syria between February 3 and 12 as part of the campaign against the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.
The United States hit ISIS infrastructure and weapons storage targets, US Central Command (Centcom) said on Saturday.
The strikes formed part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, in which the US killed or captured ISIS fighters and struck more than 100 ISIS targets. The operation began after a member of Syria’s general security forces affiliated with ISIS ambushed US and Syrian forces in the city of Palmyra, killing two US soldiers and a translator and wounding three members of Syrian government forces.
The United States has led the international coalition to defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq since 2014, partnering with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to defeat the radical group. Syria officially joined the coalition in November, and Washington has since turned to Damascus as its main anti-ISIS ally.
Analysts warn that the group has been trying to restructure itself since Assad’s ouster in December 2024, taking advantage of the security vacuum and weapons that flooded the country when Assad’s soldiers abandoned their posts.
On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Damascus for its participation in the anti-ISIS coalition and welcomed the Syrian government’s commitment to fully cooperate with the US and the global coalition.
The United States has been steadily evacuating male detainees accused of being ISIS fighters from Northeast Syria over the past month, and announced Friday that it had successfully transferred 5,700 detainees to Iraq, where they are expected to be tried. The US military is reducing its military presence in Syria and evacuating its base in Al-Tanf this week, which has been in place for nearly a decade.
Damascus took control Key ISIS prisons and camps in the past month As part of its offensive against the SDF, in which the SDF lost 80% of its territory. Among the camps Damascus currently controls is al-Hawl camp, where approximately 25,000 family members of suspected ISIS fighters were previously held.
Nearly the entire foreign annex of the camp, which houses about 6,000 women and children from 42 different countries, was evacuated last month, humanitarian experts said Friday. It is unclear where the foreign residents went or who took them out of the camp.
