By Jared Malsin and Michael R. Gordon
The attacker who killed three Americans in an ambush on U.S. forces in Syria on Saturday was a member of the Syrian security forces who was set to be fired for holding extremist views, according to Syrian and U.S. officials.
The attack illustrated the security challenges facing Syria's new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Islamist militant who is trying to consolidate control over the country after the collapse of former President Bashar al-Assad's regime last year.
The incident also underscored the stakes for President Trump, who met with Sharaa at the White House in November and embraced him as a partner in combating Islamic State militants but faces new concerns about the Damascus government's ability to screen its forces and new recruits.
Nour Eddin al-Baba, a spokesman for Syria's interior ministry, said in an interview with the country's national television service that the assailant had been suspected of extremist sympathies in an evaluation issued on Dec. 10, and was set to be dismissed from the security forces on Sunday, the day after the attack.
The attacker didn't hold a leadership role and wasn't part of the group that escorted a local Syrian security commander to a meeting with an American military official, Baba said. Syria is investigating whether the gunman had direct ties to Islamic State or if he simply adopted its ideology, he said in comments late Saturday night.
Initial information gathered by the U.S. also indicated that the assailant had been a member of Syrian security forces who had been fired or was in the process of being removed because of suspected links to Islamic State, according to a U.S. official.
U.S. officials view extending the Syrian government's control over the fractured country as a key step toward combating remnants of Islamic State.
Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the region, visited Damascus in September with Thomas Barrack, the U.S. ambassador in Turkey and special envoy to Syria, to thank Sharaa for his support in fighting the militants. Sharaa officially joined the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS during his White House meeting with Trump.
"Our strategy is to enable capable Syrian partners, with limited U.S. operational support, to hunt down ISIS networks, deny them safe haven, and prevent their resurgence," Barrack said on social media on Sunday. "The recent attack doesn't invalidate that strategy; it reinforces it."
Sharaa's government has integrated a broad array of former rebel groups into Syria's new military and security forces, including former members of his own former Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, other more mainstream rebel groups, and some hard-line fighters including those implicated in two bouts of sectarian violence against religious minorities this year.
The Saturday attack took place at the entrance of a fortified facility of the Internal Security Command, Syria's main domestic security force, near the city of Palmyra, the Interior Ministry spokesman said. The meeting was described by U.S. officials as an effort to broaden cooperation between the U.S. military and Syria's Interior Ministry and extend it to Central Syria.
The assailant was armed with a machine gun and fired on the U.S. and Syrian troops from a nearby building, U.S. officials said. Two soldiers from the Iowa National Guard were killed and three others were wounded, a rare deadly attack against U.S. personnel in the country. A U.S. civilian working as an interpreter was also killed. A Syrian officer was killed and two others injured, according to the Interior Ministry.
Iowa Guard soldiers deployed to the Middle East earlier this year, including in Syria, and its troops drove to the meeting from the Al Tanf Garrison, an American outpost in southeast Syria near the border of Jordan and Iraq, the U.S. official said.
U.S. and Syrian forces didn't identify the assailant who was killed by Syrian forces or describe his motivations. Aaron Zelin, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the attacker appeared to be a former ISIS insurgent named Tariq Satouf al-Hamd, who had joined Syria's security forces after the fall of Assad as part of an "infiltration operation" and was based in Palmyra.
Following the killings, Trump vowed "very serious retaliation" in a social-media post that attributed the attack to Islamic State and called it an attack on the U.S. and Syria. Sharaa "is extremely angry and disturbed by this," Trump said.
The nature of the retaliation wasn't clear as the U.S. and its Syrian partners are already involved in raids and airstrikes against Islamic State extremists who are attempting to regroup in parts of the country and destabilize the new government.
Despite the U.S. officials' vows to continue cooperation with Syria's forces, some analysts say the attack could complicate efforts to deepen U.S.-Syria security ties until Sharaa establishes better control over his security forces and improves vetting.
Islamic State seized a huge swath of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before Iraqi and Syrian forces, backed by a campaign that involved U.S. advisers, American and allied special operations forces and thousands of American airstrikes, collapsed the militants' self-styled caliphate in 2019. Thousands of ISIS fighters remain in detention in northeast Syria, and tens of thousands of refugees, many deemed to be sympathetic to the terrorist group, are being kept in a camp at Al Hol.
The U.S. has around 1,000 troops stationed in Syria, mostly in the eastern portion, down from around 2,000 in April. For years, many of those forces have been partnered with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia that controls a section of Syria north and east of the Euphrates River.
U.S. military leaders are working to broker a merger between the SDF and the new Syrian military affiliated with the government in Damascus.
Islamic State militants have staged 117 attacks in northeast Syria through the end of August, far outpacing the 73 attacks in all of 2024, according to figures from the SDF. In June, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a church in Damascus in an attack the Syrian government blamed on ISIS.
Sharaa, a onetime leader of al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, severed ties with the terror group in 2016 in order to position himself as the leader of the national rebellion to free Syria from Assad. The U.S. government removed his designation as a terrorist this year.
Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 14, 2025 12:49 ET (17:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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