The two Iowa National Guard soldiers who were killed by a gunman in Syria on Saturday were Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard and Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, the Guard said in a statement on Monday.
The gunman also killed an American civilian contractor who was working as an interpreter and has not been named by officials yet. Three more Iowa National Guard soldiers were injured in the attack, two of them seriously enough to require evacuation. All the soldiers involved were assigned to the 113th Cavalry Regiment, a part of the 34th Infantry Division.
About 1,800 Iowa Army National Guard troops were deployed to the Middle East in May as part of a continuing military mission to work with local forces to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Roughly 250 of the Iowa troops are in Syria, part of a total of about 1,000 American troops in the country.
The soldiers’ next of kin were notified over the weekend. Sergeant Howard’s stepfather — Chief Jeffrey Bunn of the Meskwaki Nation Police Department in Tama, Iowa — wrote on Facebook that he and his wife had received “that visit from Army commanders you never want to have.”
“Our son Nate was one of the soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, to keep us all safer,” he wrote on Saturday in a post shared alongside a photo of Sergeant Howard in uniform. “He loved what he was doing and would be the first in and last out, no one left behind.”
Sergeant Howard, 29, grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa. According to a post on a Facebook page affiliated with the Iowa National Guard, he had been serving in the Guard for more than a decade, and was inspired to join by his grandfather. His goal had been to retire after 20 years of service, the post said.
Sergeant Torres Tovar, 25, was from Grimes, Iowa. His father, Hugo Torres, confirmed that his son had been killed in the attack.
“They were dedicated professionals and cherished members of our Guard family who represented the best of Iowa.” Maj. Gen. Stephen Osborn, the adjutant general of the Iowa National Guard, said in the statement.
The two soldiers were the first American casualties in Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the country’s longtime dictator, a year ago. The last Iowa National Guard member to be killed overseas was Sgt. First Class Terryl Pasker, who died in Afghanistan in July 2011.
The gunman who fired on the American soldiers was killed by Syrian security forces, officials said. President Trump wrote on social media on Saturday that the United States would retaliate against the Islamic State for the attack.
Christina Morales is a national reporter for The Times.
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