Three of four US soldiers killed in Syrian bombing identified

Three US soldiers killed in a suicide attack in the northern Syrian town of Manbij earlier this week were identified by the Department of Defense Friday.

The three soldiers killed were named as Army Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida; Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent, 35, from upstate New York; and Scott Wirtz, a civilian Department of Defense employee from St. Louis.

A fourth person, a civilian contractor, was not named.

Wednesday’s suicide bombing, claimed by the Islamic State group, was the deadliest to hit US troops since they deployed to Syria in 2014.

Nineteen people, including four Americans, were killed in the attack on a grill house in the central market of the flashpoint town of Manbij.

Run by a Washington-backed town council since the US-led coalition and its ground partners pushed out jihadists in 2016, Manbij has been a realm of relative quiet.

The town was considered sufficiently secure that a group of top US military commanders and lawmakers strolled through the same market place without body armor during a tour of the area last summer.

But US military presence in the town has been thrown into question after US President Donald Trump’s shock announcement last month that he would pull all American troops from Syria, claiming the IS had been “largely defeated.”

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump tweeted in December in announcing his intention to bring back US troops “NOW.”

Vice President Mike Pence repeated the claim Wednesday, saying the Islamic State “caliphate has crumbled” and its network “has been defeated.” His comments in a speech at the State Department came shortly after the US military announced that American soldiers were among those killed in Manbij.

Trump’s shifting timetable for pulling US troops out of Syria, a country he described as “sand and death,” has left allies and other players in the region confused and jockeying for influence over a withdrawal strategy that appeared to be a work in progress.

Critics have said a pullout was premature, that IS was still not defeated and a withdrawal could lead to a power vacuum that would fuel even more violence. It also led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

Since then, US officials and Trump himself have suggested the withdrawal would be slower than initially believed. White House national security adviser John Bolton said two conditions would have to be met, including the protection of America’s local Kurdish allies in northern Syria, and the total defeat of IS.

Bolton also reassured Israel of Washington’s abiding support for the Jewish state’s security, seeking to allay fears of increasing Iranian aggression after US troops are pulled out from Syria.

The US Defense Department has previously reported only two American personnel killed in combat in Syria, in separate incidents.

Wednesday’s attack came as tensions between Washington’s Syrian Kurdish ground partner and its NATO ally Turkey flare.

Ankara views the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as a “terrorist offshoot” of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a deadly insurgency for self-rule in southeastern Turkey since 1984.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened an all-out offensive to clear the group from its border.