At least 15 people have been killed, including four American soldiers, in a suicide bombing in northern Syria, media reports said Thursday.
The attack, claimed by Daesh or Islamic State, in northern city of Manbij, targeted a meeting between American and local military officials at a restaurant on Wednesday, media reports said.
Another 20 people were injured including a number of US soldiers in the suicide bombing. The dead included two US service members, a Pentagon civilian and a US contractor.
The Wednesday’s attack comes weeks after US President Donald Trump said the IS group had been defeated in Syria and that he would pull out all American forces.
The attack in Manbij, a town controlled by a militia allied to US-backed Kurdish forces, appeared to be the deadliest on US forces in Syria since they deployed on the ground there in 2015.
The US military confirmed four Americans were killed and three others wounded in the explosion, which an Islamic State-affiliated website said was the work of a suicide bomber.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said 19 people had been killed in all, including four Americans.
No experts believe ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) has been defeated, despite the group having lost almost all of the territory it held in 2014 and 2015 after seizing parts of Syria and Iraq and declaring a "caliphate."
Hours after the blast, US Vice-President Mike Pence said he and Trump condemned the attack.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he did not believe the attack would have an impact on the US decision to withdraw from Syria
Syria’s civil war has killed half a million people, forced more than half the country's pre-war population from their homes and dragged in global and regional powers.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
