WASHINGTON, Dec 20 \u2013 The US says its military has carried out a \u201cmassive strike\u201d against the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria, in response to a deadly attack on American forces in the country.<\/p>\n
The US Central Command (Centcom) said fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery \u201cstruck more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria\u201d. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.<\/p>\n
It said the operation \u201cemployed more than 100 precision munitions\u201d targeting known IS infrastructure and weapons sites.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump said \u201cwe are striking very strongly\u201d against IS strongholds, following the 13 December IS ambush in the city of Palmyra in which two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter were killed.<\/p>\n
In a statement on X, Centcom, which directs American military operations in Europe, Africa and the Indo-Pacific, said Operation Hawkeye Strike was launched at 16:00 Eastern Time (21:00 GMT) on Friday.<\/p>\n
Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper said that the US \u201cwill continue to relentlessly pursue terrorists who seek to harm Americans and our partners across the region\u201d.<\/p>\n
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the operation \u201cis not the beginning of a war \u2013 it is a declaration of vengeance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you target Americans \u2013 anywhere in the world \u2013 you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue,\u201d the US defence secretary added.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 \u2013 The US says its military has carried out a \u201cmassive strike\u201d against the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria, in response to a deadly attack on American forces in the country. The US Central Command (Centcom) said fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery \u201cstruck more than 70 targets at multiple locations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}