The U.S. military announced Tuesday it had killed seven Islamic State members and captured more than a dozen as it continues to put pressure on the terror group in Syria, weeks after an ambush there killed two Iowa National Guard soldiers.
The missions to kill or capture the fighters occurred from Dec. 20 to Dec. 29 and directly followed large-scale U.S. and Jordanian airstrikes on Dec. 19 that hit more than 70 Islamic State targets across the country in response to the attack on U.S. forces at a military base in Palmyra earlier this month.
The U.S. has maintained a military presence of roughly 1,000 troops in Syria as the transitional government has struggled to control all of the country’s territory and quell sporadic violence following the toppling of the former president, Bashar al-Assad, by rebel forces led by current President Ahmed al-Sharaa in December 2024.
In the months since, the U.S. military role in Syria has been transitioning to support the new government’s efforts to reestablish security after years of training and fighting alongside partner forces.
At its height, the Islamic State controlled a wide swath of territory stretching across Iraq and Syria. Last year, U.S. Central Command estimated that some 2,500 Islamic State fighters remained at large in the two countries.
In Syria, Kurdish-led fighters, supported by the United States, guard Islamic State detainees as well as two camps that house tens of thousands of dependents that security experts worry are ripe for recruitment.
U.S. Central Command said in a statement that in 2025 the Islamic State inspired at least 11 plots or attacks against targets inside the United States, though did not provide details.
In response, it has conducted dozens of operations this year that have killed or captured as many as 300 Islamic State fighters, Centcom said. One of those missions included a September operation that killed senior Islamic State operative Omar Abdul Qader.
U.S. forces there will continue “to hunt down terrorist operatives, eliminate ISIS networks, and work with partners to prevent an ISIS resurgence,” Centcom commander Adm. Brad Cooper said in a statement, using the acronym for the Islamic State.
But the fledgling Syrian security services have also been a concern — accused of perpetrating atrocities during sectarian fighting that killed thousands of people in the country’s coastal regions and in southern Syria. The new government’s forces have absorbed the constellation of rebel factions that fought for more than a decade against Assad — among them, foreign fighters and hard-line Islamists.
In the Palmyra attack, Centcom said a lone Islamic State militant who had been absorbed into Syria’s security forces fired on U.S. troops as they were conducting a “key leader engagement,” similar to the force development missions U.S. troops conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The attack killed two members of the Iowa National Guard — Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29 — along with Ayad Mansoor Sakat, 54, an Iraqi-born interpreter who lived in Michigan. Three other U.S. soldiers and two members of Syria’s security forces were wounded in the ambush.
The revelation that the gunman was a member of Syria’s security services was a blow to Sharaa’s government, which has made strong relations with the United States a priority as the country emerges from a long civil war.
During a visit by Sharaa to the White House in November, the Trump administration announced that Syria had joined the anti-Islamic State global coalition — a stunning turn for Sharaa, who was once imprisoned by U.S. forces in Iraq and went on to lead Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate until his rebel formation, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, severed ties with the transnational extremist group in 2017.
Since the Palmyra assault, Syria’s interior ministry has announced a series of raids targeting the Islamic State in several provinces, including operations it said swept up several leaders in Damascus province and in the country’s southwest.
The group is seen as a grave threat to Syria at an especially critical time, as the government is trying to attract foreign investment and prevent sectarian tensions. Two shadowy recent attacks have stirred fears among minorities: the deadly bombing of a church outside Damascus in June that officials blamed on the Islamic State and the bombing of a mosque that killed eight people on Friday in an Alawite neighborhood in Homs. The authorities have not identified the perpetrator in the mosque attack.
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