US Airstrike Hits House in NE Syria, Killing Three

House was surrounded by Kurdish troops

US forces carried out an airstrike against a house in the town of Khirbet Jamous, in NE Syria, killing at least three people within and wounding several others. The identities of the slain are uncertain.

The town is in Hasakeh Province, and the house was reportedly surrounded for hours by Kurdish fighters before the US airstrike hit. This suggests it was a coordinated attack, though so far neither the US nor the Kurds offered details.

The US doesn’t carry out a lot of airstrikes in Syria anymore, with the last handful of troops mostly around a single US-claimed oil site. The recent US military actions in the area are almost exclusively targeting Iraqi militias in the border area between Iraq and Syria.

US strikes are risky in this area, because they have tended to provoke retaliation, and their troop positions on both sides of the border are not in particularly well-defended areas.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.