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Five rockets fired from Iraq towards the US military base in Syria, security sources say

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The military official said the truck caught fire in an explosion of unfired rockets while fighter jets were in the air at the same time.

“We cannot confirm that the truck was bombed by US warplanes unless we investigate,” a military official said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the incident.

Iraqi security forces were deployed to the area and launched a hunt for the perpetrators who fled the area in another vehicle, a security official stationed in Zummar said.

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An army officer said the truck has been seized for further investigation and preliminary investigations indicate it was destroyed by an airstrike.

“We are communicating with coalition forces in Iraq to share information about this attack,” the officer added.

The attacks came a day after a massive explosion at a military base in… Iraq Early Saturday morning, a member of an Iraqi security force, which also includes Iranian-backed groups, was killed. The force commander said it was an attack, while the army said it was investigating and that no fighter jets were in the air at the time.
US-sanctioned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said this in an interview published earlier on Sunday Syria has met with Washington “from time to time” as the country looks for openings after more than a decade of isolation.

The US was among the first to cut ties with Assad over the repression of anti-government protests that led to war in 2011, and many Western and Arab states have also cut ties.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photo: Sana / AFP

Last year, however, Syria returned to the Arab fold, seeking better ties with wealthy US-allied Gulf states in the hope they can help finance reconstruction – although Western sanctions are likely to deter investment.

“America is currently illegally occupying part of our country… but we meet with them from time to time, even if these meetings lead nowhere,” Assad said in an interview with a Russian-backed official from Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region, published by the official Syrian news agency Sana.

Assad gave no further details about who was involved in the meetings or what was discussed.

“There is always hope: even if we know there will be no results, we have to try,” he said when asked about the possibility of restoring ties with the West.

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After the outbreak of war, the United States imposed a raft of sanctions on Syria – which had already been a pariah state in the West under Assad’s father Hafez.

In 2020, a US law known as the Caesar Act went into effect that punishes all companies that work with Assad.

The Caesar Act, accompanied by a slew of US sanctions against Syrians close to Assad, aimed to exact responsibility for human rights abuses and encourage a political solution.

Washington is also at odds with Damascus over US support for the semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria, who have taken the lead in the fight against Islamic State with support from a US-led international coalition.

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Damascus accuses Kurdish authorities, who control most of the country’s major oil fields, of separatism. It accuses them of being traitors because of their close ties to the US.

In 2022, Biden had accused Syria of holding US journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Damascus more than a decade ago, and called on the Syrian government to secure his release.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry denied he was detaining Americans, including Tice.

Tice was a freelance photojournalist working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other news organizations when he was detained at a checkpoint near Damascus on August 14, 2012.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

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