- US troops and the Syrian Democratic Forces carried out a joint helicopter raid in Syria on Thursday.
- The target, a senior Islamic State leader named Hamza al-Homsi, was killed during the operation.
Four US service members and a military working dog were injured during a raid targeting a senior Islamic State leader in Syria, US Central Command said on Friday.
US troops partnered with the Syrian Democratic Forces to carry out the joint helicopter raid in northeastern Syria on Thursday night, CENTCOM said in a statement. Although the target, Hamza al-Homsi, was killed, the operation went sideways when an explosion wounded the four Americans and their working dog.
Col. Joe Buccino, a CENTCOM spokesperson, told Insider that al-Homsi managed to detonate an explosion "on the target in the vicinity of Deir ez-Zor," a city in eastern Syria, which resulted in the multiple injuries. It was not immediately clear what the explosive device was. It's also unclear if al-Homsi — who led the Islamic State's network in eastern Syria — was killed by US and SDF forces or by the explosion.
The wounded troops and dog are currently being treated at a US medical facility in Iraq and are in "stable condition," Buccino said. "No other ISIS fighters were killed or captured. No SDF partner forces were injured during the operation. No civilians were on the target, and initial assessments indicate no civilians were killed or injured."
Thursday night's raid comes just a few weeks after US forces carried out an assault in northern Somalia and killed Bilal al-Sudani, an ISIS leader in the country, and several other members of the terror group. Al-Sudani had played a key role in growing the group's African presence and funding operations around the world — including a deadly attack in during the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 US troops dead.
Meanwhile, the US military and its partner forces continue to hunt down ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria. A CENTCOM-led coalition in January carried out 43 partnered operations against ISIS in those two countries, resulting in 11 operatives killed and 227 others detained.
"While our efforts have degraded ISIS, the group's vile ideology remains uncontained and unconstrained," Gen. Michael Kurilla, the CENTCOM commander, said earlier in February.
"ISIS continues to represent a threat to not only Iraq and Syria, but to the stability and security of the region," he continued. "Therefore, we must continue the fight against ISIS alongside our partners."
Local Syrian forces killed the Islamic State's leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, during an October raid. US special operations forces had taken out the terror group's previous two leaders before al-Qurayshi in previous missions — one in February 2022 and another in October 2019.