US military says 22 US soldiers injured in helicopter crash in northern Syria Wagon Radio 720

BEIRUT (AP) – Twenty-two US servicemen were injured in a helicopter crash in northeastern Syria last weekend, the US military said Tuesday, adding that the cause of the crash was under investigation and that enemy artillery fire was not involved. rice field.

A military statement said the soldiers were being treated and 10 were transferred to a “super-medical facility” outside the area.

“Twenty-two US servicemen suffered varying degrees of injuries in a helicopter crash in northeastern Syria,” it said. “No enemy fire was reported.”

A spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces did not immediately respond to the Associated Press’ request for comment.

At least 900 US troops are stationed in Syria on average, with undisclosed contractors. U.S. special operations forces also fly in and out of the country, but they are usually organized in small teams and are not included in official numbers.

US troops have been in Syria since 2015, advising and assisting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in its fight against the Islamic State militant group. Since the defeat of militants in Syria in March 2019, US forces have sought to prevent a resurgence of IS, which swept Iraq and Syria in 2014 and overwhelmed vast swaths of territory.

However, IS sleeper cells are still a threat. About 10,000 IS fighters are also held in camps in Syria, with tens of thousands of their families living in two refugee camps in the country’s northeast.

Over the past few years, US forces have come under attack by IS members and Iranian-backed fighters. In late March, a drone strike on a U.S. military base killed one contractor and injured five U.S. soldiers and another contractor. In retaliation, US fighter jets attacked several locations around the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the time that the strikes were in response to the drone strikes and a series of recent attacks against the U.S.-led coalition in Syria by affiliates of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In a related development, Syria’s Kurdish-led authorities announced on Saturday that they would bring hundreds of IS fighters held in prisons across the region to justice after their home country refused to repatriate them.