US Company Signs Deal for Syrian Oil

US conducts strikes in Syria after indirect fire threatens troops

The US military conducted strikes in Syria after indirect fire posed what a US-led coalition official called "an imminent threat" to troops near Green Village, a base in the east of the country near the Iraqi border.

While the US is not officially confirming it conducted the strikes, a defense official with direct knowledge noted that only US forces in that area have weapons capable of carrying out these kinds of strikes.

Preliminary assessments have concluded the strikes destroyed the seven Katyusha rocket sites they were targeting...

A Dam in Syria Was on a ‘No-Strike’ List. The U.S. Bombed It Anyway

Near the height of the war against the Islamic State in Syria, a sudden riot of explosions rocked the country’s largest dam, a towering, 18-story structure on the Euphrates River that held back a 25-mile-long reservoir above a valley where hundreds of thousands of people lived.

The Islamic State, the Syrian government and Russia blamed the United States, but the dam was on the U.S. military’s “no-strike list” of protected civilian sites and the commander of the U.S. offensive at the time, then-Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, said allegations of U.S. involvement were based on “crazy reporting”...

In fact, members of a top secret U.S. Special Operations unit called Task Force 9 had struck the dam using some of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal, including at least one BLU-109 bunker-buster bomb designed to destroy thick concrete structures, according to two former senior officials. And they had done it despite a military report warning not to bomb the dam, because the damage could cause a flood that might kill tens of thousands of civilians...

The Al-Qurayshi Operation and Minimization of Civilian Casualties

Measured by the metrics for success set by the U.S. military and U.S. intelligence community, the removal of ISIS’s leader — Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi — from the battlefield is an important achievement. President Joe Biden and other senior administration officials’ emphasis on minimization of civilian casualties in an operation against such a high value target accordingly deserves special attention...

U.S. kills ISIS leader, but another is already waiting in the wings

The death of the Islamic State leader in a raid by U.S. special forces on his Syrian hideout was a devastating blow to the resurgent terrorist group, but his replacement is already waiting in the wings, experts said Thursday. And while a successor to Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi has yet to be revealed, he will most likely be another Iraqi steeped in both Islamic fanaticism and terror, they said...

Attack in east Syria injures 2 US-led coalition members

Artillery hit a base housing U.S. troops in eastern Syria early Thursday, lightly injuring two members of the U.S.-led coalition there, the organization said. The attack — two rounds of indirect fire — was the first to hit the base in Syria's Deir el-Zour province since January, when eight rounds landed inside its perimeter... The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said five rockets were fired early Thursday from positions where Iran-backed fighters are based...

US military changes explanation of attack on base in Syria

The U.S. military says explosions earlier this month on a base in eastern Syria that injured several U.S. service members were not, as it originally reported, caused by artillery or another form of indirect fire. Instead, it is now believed the April 7 attack was carried out by the “deliberate placement of explosive charges” by one or more individuals at an ammunition holding area and shower facility on the base, according to a statement issued Thursday by the Operation Inherent Resolve command that oversees U.S. military operations against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq...