- The Pentagon says there were no US casualties in a counter-terrorism mission.
- Atmeh residents say a nighttime raid took place in a densely populated area near the border with Turkey.
- Report several civilian casualties who say the attack targeted a suspected al-Qaeda militant.
AMMAN: US Special Operations forces successfully conducted a counter-terrorism mission in northwestern Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon said, adding that there were no US casualties but providing no further details.
Residents of the northwestern Syrian city of Atmeh and rebels fighting the Syrian government previously reported that several civilians were killed during the two-hour operation, with the attack believed to have targeted a suspected al-Qaeda-affiliated militant.
“US Special Operations forces under the control of the US Central Command conducted a counter-terrorism mission in northwestern Syria tonight. The mission was successful,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement.
“There were no US casualties. More information will be provided as it becomes available.”
Residents of Atmeh said the raid took place around midnight in a densely populated area near the border with Turkey, where tens of thousands of displaced Syrians live in makeshift camps or overcrowded housing.
There were no reports of any militants having been killed, but residents said they heard heavy gunfire during the operation, suggesting resistance to the raid.
One resident said several people were killed in the raid, while another said rescuers retrieved at least 12 bodies from the rubble of a multi-storey building, including children and women.
Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said he spoke to residents who said the surgery took more than two hours.
“They obviously wanted whoever it was,” Lister said.
“This looks like the largest such operation” since the Baghdadi raid, he said.
Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019 in a US special operation in northwestern Syria.
Residents and rebel sources said several helicopters have landed near Atmeh in Idlib province, the last major enclave occupied by insurgents fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and explosions were heard nearby from the home of a foreign militant.
The militant suspected of being targeted was with his family at the time of the raid, a rebel official who declined to be named said.
Witnesses said the attack ended with planes believed to be helicopters leaving the site, but unidentified reconnaissance aircraft were still hovering in the area.
The rebel official said that security from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group rushed to the site after the raid.
Northwestern Syria – the province of Idlib and an area around it – is largely in the hands of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the former Nusra Front, which was part of Al Qaeda until 2016.
Several foreign militant figures who have split from the group have created the Huras al-Din (Guardians of Religion) group, which is classified as a foreign terrorist organization and has been the target of coalition strikes in recent years.
For years, the US military has primarily launched drones to kill top al-Qaeda operatives in northern Syria, where the militant group became active during Syria’s more than decade-long civil war.
US-led coalition operations against remnants of ISIS sleeper cells are more common in northeastern Syria, which is held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
