Two members of the US-led coalition in Syria — an American and a Briton — were killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, US and British officials said on Friday.
Five other coalition service personnel were wounded, the US Department of Defense said.
The attack in Manbij happened late on Thursday — the day US President Donald Trump said he would pull forces out of Syria “very soon.”
“Two coalition personnel were killed and five were wounded by an improvised explosive device in Syria” at about midnight, the coalition said in a statement that gave no further details about the victims.
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A Pentagon official, speaking later on condition of anonymity, identified one of them as being American.
The British Ministry of Defence confirmed that the second fatality came from within its ranks.
“The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred,” the ministry said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (IS) group.
Since 2014, the coalition has provided weapons, training and other support to forces fighting IS militants in Syria and Iraq.
The incident brings the number of US personnel killed in action during operations in Syria to 14.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The US-led coalition said it was withholding details on the circumstances of the attack pending further investigation.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the attack hit a convoy in the heart of Manbij, also wounding four members of the local council.
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Manbij used to be a hub for IS militants when their self-styled “caliphate” was at its peak. It was retaken by Kurdish-led forces backed by the coalition.
Located between the northern city of Aleppo and the western bank of the Euphrates, less than 30km south of the Turkish border, Manbij lies where several international influence zones meet and risks becoming a new flashpoint.
“We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now,” Trump told industrial workers in Ohio on Thursday.
The US has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia to defeat IS while trying to keep themselves out of Syria’s broader civil war.
Trump’s eagerness to quit the conflict contrasts with the US’ Syria strategy announced in January by then-US secretary of state Rex Tillerson — who has since been sacked.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday met a delegation from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces and Kurdish official Asya Abdullah said afterwards that France was planning to send “new French troops to Manbij.”
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