In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, an F-16 Fighting Falcon takes off from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as the U.S. on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2015, launched its first airstrikes by Turkey-based F-16 fighter jets against Islamic State targets in Syria, marking a limited escalation of a yearlong air campaign that critics have called excessively cautious. (Krystal Ardrey/U.S. Air Force via AP))

The US military launched airstrikes against pro-Assad forces in southern Syria on Thursday, three US defense officials confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

It marked the second time under the Trump administration that the US has struck out against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces with airstrikes and first in the apparent vicinity of US troops operating inside Syria.

BuzzFeed News is the first to have reported US confirmation that it launched these new strikes.

The strikes were believed to have hit a regime-allied militia mixed with Syrian government forces, US officials said. They hit advancing vehicles outside a base called Tanf, near the Jordanian border. As BuzzFeed News reported last week, US Special Forces are deployed at the base with a unit of Syrian rebels. The Special Forces are training the rebels to fight ISIS — and also accompanying them on combat missions against the militants.

But the Syrian regime and its allies — including Iranian forces, Shiite militia, and Hezbollah — are also based some 40 miles outside Tanf, a rebel commander based there told BuzzFeed News last week, allowing them easy access to Tanf via a highway that cuts through the desert.

Unlike the US strike against the al-Shayrat air base in March, which the Trump administration ordered in retaliation for a regime chemical weapons attack, Thursday’s strike seemed designed to protect the US forces based at Tanf.

One of the defense officials — who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal details that the Pentagon had yet to make public — said that the US acted to stop an advance of pro-regime forces toward Tanf. Pro-regime forces had crossed a pre-agreed deconfliction zone and continued to advance despite warning strikes, he added. The strikes destroyed several vehicles. It was unclear if they resulted in any deaths.

The 5th Special Forces Group has been training and mentoring pro-Western rebel groups in and around Tanf for about six months as part of the anti-ISIS campaign developed under then-President Barack Obama and continued by the Trump administration.

While contact with ISIS units is to be expected considering the mission, this is the first instance of American air power being used against pro-Assad forces to support American troops and their rebel allies.

With a mission that focuses completely on ISIS, US troops have rarely had to worry about operating in close proximity to Syrian forces and their aligned militias. The last encounter between the groups occurred last month when Syrian troops passed near a special operations group in the Kurdish areas, but that remained peaceful. As the territory dominated by ISIS collapses in the face of advances by Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq forces in Mosul, though, the world’s most crowded battlespace further shrinks.

While the Trump administration has been firm in its opposition to ISIS, its policy towards the Assad regime has shifted rapidly at times. Prior to the chemical attack in April, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others indicated that Assad may remain in power as part of a deal to end the ongoing civil war. Since then, Tillerson and Trump have called for Assad’s exit.

With additional reporting by Mitch Prothero in Brussels.</s>A US airstrike has hit pro-Syrian government forces in southern Syria, US officials say.

The war in Syria has been underway for more than six years, fought primarily between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and various forces opposing the government.

The airstrike targeted the Syrian regime forces after they breached a "de-confliction zone", according to CNN.

The US-led coalition commander first attempted to get the pro-Assad forces out of the zone by dispatching two US aircraft as "a show of force". When the forces did not respond, the commander called for an airstrike.

The strike was near a base in An Tanf, which is used by the coalition to train vetted Syrian opposition to help fight against Isis.

The coalition is generally not fighting the Syrian government, with the exception of a US cruise missile strike that was launched in retaliation for Assad's chemical weapons attack against rebels.

According to USA Today, an official explained Thursday's strike as a defensive action that does not change the US policy of focusing military efforts on battling Isis.</s>SDF fighters surrounded by civilians in Manbij after liberating the city from ISIS. File photo: ARA News

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ARA News

Dozens of displaced civilians from the al-Khafse town and nearby villages in the countryside of Manbij, in northern Syria, gathered on Thursday in Arbaa al-Kabir village and protested against the Syrian government.

The protesters demanded the removal of pro-Assad forces from their villages and called for the intervention of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The al-Khafse town was taken from ISIS by the Syrian government and the residents were forced to leave due to the clashes and headed to areas controlled by the SDF and the allied Manbij Military Council (MMC).

According to the pro-Kurdish ANHA agency, the residents of the area refused to return to their villages under Syrian government control, accusing the regime forces of looting their houses and threatening the residents.

As a result, dozens of IDPs from al-Khasfe gathered on Thursday demanding the Syrian government to withdraw from their villages, so that they can return home.

“I am from Khafse and we are protesting today because we want to go back home and live in safety, but this will not be possible if the Syrian regime troops do not get out of our villages,” a civilian said. “We ask the SDF and Manbij Military Council to protect our areas.”

“The regime forces are stealing and burning our properties and don’t allow us to go back home and threaten us,” he added.

On Thursday evening, the protestors headed to the Ras Ein al-Hamer checkpoint –controlled by the Syrian government– and asked for a permission to return to their villages. However, the soldiers did not allow them to cross the checkpoint, local sources told ARA News.

Reporting by: Wladimir van Wilgenburg | Source: ARA News

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Join our Weekly Newsletter</s>American warplanes have attacked pro-Assad forces for the first time to protect a base used by British special forces and other allies on a covert mission in Syria.

US Air Force jets fired at troops advancing on a ‘de-confliction zone’ near Al Tanf, where elite UK soldiers on a training mission are based.

The US had already agreed with Russia, which backs Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, that there would be no fighting in the area around Al Tanf.

But the pro-Assad convoy of 20 vehicles was deemed to ‘pose a threat to US partner forces’, and continued to advance across the desert following Russian attempts to stop it.

The airstrikes on Thursday mark the first time the US military has deliberately hit pro-government forces in response to a threat against Western troops.

The attack, which was condemned by Syria and Russia and which threatens to inflame the war, came as President Trump set off on his first international trip to the Middle East.

British special forces were first spotted near the heavily fortified Al Tanf base, close to the Jordanian and Iraqi borders, last June.

They are gathering intelligence, including the location of British foreign fighters for the RAF to kill, as well as training moderate Syrian rebels. Syria slammed the airstrike as a ‘blatant attack on forces fighting terrorism’ and said several people were killed. Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari said he had raised the ‘massacre’ committed by the US ‘aggressor’ with the UN.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov said the destruction of the convoy was a ‘breach of Syrian sovereignty’ and an attack against Syrian armed forces was ‘completely unacceptable’.

The convoy, which included four tanks, was 17 miles from Al Tanf when it was struck.

A US-led coalition commander attempted to get the pro-Assad forces out of the zone by dispatching two US aircraft as ‘a show of force’. The jets then fired warning shots to get the vehicles to turn back, Pentagon officials said.

When the forces did not respond, but began setting up fighting positions in the protected area, they were attacked.

A member of US-backed rebel forces said the convoy included Syrian and Iranian-backed militias heading towards Al Tanf when it clashed with rebel forces.

The strike was a defensive move to protect allies, US officials said.

Defence secretary James Mattis denied the attack marked an escalation of America’s role in Syria. He said: ‘We are not increasing our role in the Syrian civil war. But we will defend our troops.’

The Ministry of Defence said the RAF did not take part in the strikes. MPs have not given approval for the RAF to strike any targets in the country except those belonging to IS.</s>The U.S.-led coalition in Syria attacked Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's militia forces in air strikes Thursday, an American official confirmed to BuzzFeed News and Reuters.

"[Syrian] rebels worried last week that regime forces would get too close to U.S. [special forces] base at [the southern Syrian town of] Tanf," reported BuzzFeed News correspondent Mike Giglio. "It seems that happened today, and [the] coalition struck."

Warning shots were reportedly fired first at the Iranian-backed Syrian army militia convoy. The U.S. previously attacked Assad's forces after the regime's use of chemical weapons in the town of Idlib.

The U.S.-led coalition and the Assad regime are mutually fighting the Islamic State in the region. Jeva Lange</s>In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, an F-16 Fighting Falcon takes off from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as the U.S. on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2015, launched its first airstrikes by Turkey-based F-16 fighter jets against Islamic State targets in Syria, marking a limited escalation of a yearlong air campaign that critics have called excessively cautious. (Krystal Ardrey/U.S. Air Force via AP))

The US military launched airstrikes against pro-Assad forces in southern Syria on Thursday, three US defense officials confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

It marked the second time under the Trump administration that the US has struck out against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces with airstrikes and first in the apparent vicinity of US troops operating inside Syria.

BuzzFeed News is the first to have reported US confirmation that it launched these new strikes.

The strikes were believed to have hit a regime-allied militia mixed with Syrian government forces, US officials said. They hit advancing vehicles outside a base called Tanf, near the Jordanian border. As BuzzFeed News reported last week, US Special Forces are deployed at the base with a unit of Syrian rebels. The Special Forces are training the rebels to fight ISIS — and also accompanying them on combat missions against the militants.

But the Syrian regime and its allies — including Iranian forces, Shiite militia, and Hezbollah — are also based some 40 miles outside Tanf, a rebel commander based there told BuzzFeed News last week, allowing them easy access to Tanf via a highway that cuts through the desert.

Unlike the US strike against the al-Shayrat air base in March, which the Trump administration ordered in retaliation for a regime chemical weapons attack, Thursday’s strike seemed designed to protect the US forces based at Tanf.

One of the defense officials — who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal details that the Pentagon had yet to make public — said that the US acted to stop an advance of pro-regime forces toward Tanf. Pro-regime forces had crossed a pre-agreed deconfliction zone and continued to advance despite warning strikes, he added. The strikes destroyed several vehicles. It was unclear if they resulted in any deaths.

The 5th Special Forces Group has been training and mentoring pro-Western rebel groups in and around Tanf for about six months as part of the anti-ISIS campaign developed under then-President Barack Obama and continued by the Trump administration.

While contact with ISIS units is to be expected considering the mission, this is the first instance of American air power being used against pro-Assad forces to support American troops and their rebel allies.

With a mission that focuses completely on ISIS, US troops have rarely had to worry about operating in close proximity to Syrian forces and their aligned militias. The last encounter between the groups occurred last month when Syrian troops passed near a special operations group in the Kurdish areas, but that remained peaceful. As the territory dominated by ISIS collapses in the face of advances by Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq forces in Mosul, though, the world’s most crowded battlespace further shrinks.

While the Trump administration has been firm in its opposition to ISIS, its policy towards the Assad regime has shifted rapidly at times. Prior to the chemical attack in April, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others indicated that Assad may remain in power as part of a deal to end the ongoing civil war. Since then, Tillerson and Trump have called for Assad’s exit.

With additional reporting by Mitch Prothero in Brussels.</s>Dozens of residents reported dead in clashes between government forces and ISIL fighters in villages near Hama city.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has attacked villages near the only useable road that links the government-controlled cities of Aleppo and Homs, killing many residents, according to Syrian state media and a Britain-based war monitor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said 52 people, civilians and fighters on both sides, were killed and dozens injured in Thursday's incidents.

At least 15 were civilians, including five children, and three of them died in execution-style killings, it said.

State-run SANA news agency said that ISIL fighters killed 20 people in the village of Aqarib al-Safi, east of Hama city, before the army and allied militia repulsed the attack.

The SOHR said ISIL, also known as ISIS, seized Aqarib al-Safi and parts of the nearby village of al-Mabouja as clashes raged on.

ISIL said on social media they had captured Aqarib al-Safi.

Also on Thursday, the US military carried out an air strike against the Syrian pro-government fighters that posed a threat to US-backed fighters in the country's south, US officials told Reuters news agency.

The US official said on Thursday, the strikes near the town of At Tanf destroyed at least one tank and a bulldozer, and another said it followed warning shots by US aircraft meant to dissuade the fighters from advancing further.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In another Syria-related development, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters has seized 350sq km over the past week in Syria's Raqqa province, "tightening their noose" on ISIL in an advance to isolate its base of operations, a spokesman for a US-led coalition said on Wednesday.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has been encircling Raqqa, ISIL's self-proclaimed capital in Syria, since November. Last week, its fighters accomplished a major goal by capturing Tabqa, a previously ISIL-held town about 50km west of Raqqa, and a strategic dam nearby.

About 3,000 to 4,000 ISIL fighters are thought to be holed up in Raqqa city where they continue to erect defences against the anticipated assault, Colonel Ryan Dillon told Reuters news agency in a phone interview from Iraq's capital, Baghdad.

"In the last week, the SDF have tightened their noose around ISIL in the northern and eastern and western part of Raqqa," Dillon said.

Syria's civil war began in 2011 after mass protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad and has killed hundreds of thousands of people, driven half the country's population from their homes and dragged in world powers.</s>The Syrian government has said an aerial “aggression” on one of its military positions near the border with Jordan by the US-led coalition killed several soldiers.

The air strike was the first such confrontation between US forces and fighters backing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and is likely to increase tensions in the war-torn country.

A Syrian military official confirmed the strike on state TV on Friday.

The US-led coalition announced on Thursday that it had launched an air strike targeting pro-Assad forces it said posed a threat to American troops and allied rebels operating near the border with Jordan.

The attack comes at a time when the US presence in Syria is becoming more visible, mostly in northern parts of the country, where American troops are backing Kurdish-led forces fighting Islamic State (Isis).

This “flagrant aggression launched by the international coalition exposes the falsity of its allegation about fighting terrorism and undoubtedly demonstrates the reality of the Zionist-American project in the region”, the Syrian military official said.

In Geneva, Bashar al-Ja’afari, the head of the Syrian government delegation to the peace talks under way in the Swiss city aimed at ending Syria’s six-year civil war, told reporters he had discussed the air strike during a meeting with UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura, describing the attack as “state terrorism”.

“In every meeting, we remind the attendees that there is terrorism by terrorists and also terrorism by states committed against our country,” Mr al-Ja’afari said.

The US-led coalition has carried out a number of air strikes in recent months that have killed civilians in areas held by Isis.

The Syrian government, which has launched an offensive in the country’s south backed by allied militias such as Iranian paramilitaries and Hizbullah, has vowed to take back the border area near Iraq.

That is likely to be opposed by the US and its allies, who back rebels fighting Isis in the same area.

A road between Iraq and Syria would facilitate further assistance from Iran, which is a strong backer of Assad.

The coalition said “apparent” Russian attempts to stop pro-Assad forces from moving toward Tanf had failed.

US officials and Syrian activists said the air strike took place in the desert near the border with Jordan, although it was unclear if it struck the Syrian army or just militias allied with the government.

The Syrian military official said the area hit was a military position along the Tanf highway.

The area around Tanf, where the borders of Jordan, Syria and Iraq meet, has been considered a de-conflicted zone, under an agreement between the US and Russia that came into effect earlier this month.
Dozens of displaced civilians from al-Khafse and nearby villages in the countryside of Manbij gather in the village of Arbaa al-Kabir to protest against the Bashar al-Assad government, demanding the removal of pro-Assad forces from their villages and calling for the intervention of the Syrian Democratic Forces after accusing regime forces of looting houses and threatening residents.