One of the killed was American and the other British, according to multiple reports.Although the Coalition has yet to officially identify the casualties, a number of news outlets have already reported them as American and British. The U.S. military statement said the incident occurred on Thursday night and that the wounded personnel were being evacuated for further medical treatment. The American casualty comes a day after President Donald Trump said the United States would be leaving Syria “very soon.” The State Department said it was not aware of any plans to withdraw from Syria. Fox News and Reuters cited a US military official, while Sky News cited the UK Ministry of Defence.A spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) - the official name of the US-led military operation against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria - confirmed in a brief statement on Thursday that "two Coalition personnel were killed and five were wounded by an improvised explosive device in Syria. Two US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity and citing initial information, said one of the people killed in the blast on Thursday was an American and the incident took place near the city of Manbij in northern Syria. The unnamed British soldier was embedded with US special forces overseeing a clean-up operation in Manbij, which was controlled by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) until it was taken by allied Kurdish and Arab forces in the summer of 2016. U.S. military spokesperson Col. Ryan Dillon couldn't immediately say who was behind the attack. The US-led coalition said it was withholding details on the circumstances of the attack pending further investigation. Also on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron met a delegation from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and Kurdish official Asya Abdullah said afterwards that France was planning to send "new French troops to Manbij." Manbij has largely been cleared of Islamic State and is significant because Turkey, which stormed the northern Syrian town of Afrin after an offensive against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, has repeatedly threatened to push its operations farther east to Manbij. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to expand the operation to other areas where Kurdish forces are present, including the city of Manbij.
A roadside bomb in Syria kills one British and one U.S. soldier and injures five more coalition personnel. It is the first death of a British soldier fighting ISIL.