The United States has launched more strikes against ISIS in Syria in retaliation for the slaying of three Americans late last year.
U.S. Central Command announced that over 30 ISIS targets were hit in 10 strikes conducted between Feb. 3 to Feb. 12. The targets were “ISIS infrastructure and weapons storage” and they were struck by “fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and unmanned aircraft.”
Those strikes came on top of five others conducted from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2 that hit an ISIS “communication site, critical logistics node, and weapons storage facilities.”
All were part of “Operation Hawkeye Strike,” a military operation launched shortly after two U.S. soldiers and a civilian interpreter were ambushed and killed by an ISIS-affiliated gunman in Palmyra, Syria. The goal of the operation is to prevent “ISIS from inspiring terrorist plots and attacks against the U.S. homeland,” according to CENTCOM Cmdr. Brad Cooper.
The U.S. military has steadily kept up the operation over the past few months, including by killing an Al Qaeda terrorist in mid-January who was “directly connected” to the deaths of the three Americans.
CENTCOM said on Saturday that “more than 50 ISIS terrorists have been killed or captured and over 100 ISIS infrastructure targets have been struck” during Hawkeye Strike.
But the Pentagon has also moved to draw down its presence in Syria.
On Thursday, CENTCOM announced that troops completed an “orderly departure” of al Tanf Garrison, a base located at the Jordan-Iraq-Syria border. That came as part of a consolidation effort, announced by the War Department in April 2025, for U.S. bases in Syria following the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2019.
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The U.S. also recently assisted in relocating thousands of ISIS terrorists in custody from Syria to Iraq, a mission that was completed on Friday.
Despite these moves, Cooper has maintained that U.S. forces in the region “remain poised to respond to any ISIS threats that arise.”
