Washington: Despite attacks on US forces there last week by militias backed by Iran, the United States will not withdraw from its nearly eight-year-old deployment to Syria, where it is battling the remnants of Daesh, the White House said on Monday.
On March 23, a one-way attack drone that was flying overhead struck a US base in Syria, killing one American contractor, injuring another, and wounding five US soldiers.
A Syrian war monitoring organisation reported that as a result of US retaliatory airstrikes and gunfights, three Syrian soldiers, 11 Syrian militiamen, and five foreign combatants who supported the government were all killed.
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John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said he was not aware of any additional attacks over the previous 36 hours but issued a warning:
Kirby also brought up President Joe Biden's Friday speech, in which he warned Iran that the US would use force to defend its citizens. As a result of the events of the previous few days, Kirby stated that "there has been no change in the US footprint in Syria," adding that the mission against Daesh would go on as planned.
We won't be discouraged by these militant groups' attacks, they said. Syria's foreign ministry denounced US strikes on its territory on Sunday, accusing Washington of lying about what it was targeting, and vowed to "end the American occupation."
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The strikes were also denounced by Iran's foreign ministry, which charged that US forces were focusing on "civilian sites." During the Obama administration's campaign against Daesh, US forces entered Syria for the first time in cooperation with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led organisation. About 900 US soldiers are present in Syria, the majority of them in the east.
Prior to the most recent wave of attacks, the US military reported that Iranian-backed groups had attacked US troops in Syria 78 times since the year 2021.
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Throughout Syria's 12-year conflict, Iran has been a major supporter of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Hezbollah and other pro-Iran groups from Lebanon and Iraq are among the proxy militias that control large portions of eastern, southern, and northern Syria as well as the suburbs surrounding the capital, Damascus.