WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Iowa National Guard members were killed Monday in a weekend attack that the U.S. military blamed on the Islamic State group in Syria.
The U.S. Army named them Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds ordered all flags in Iowa to be flown at half-mast in their honor, saying: “We are grateful for their service and deeply saddened by their passing.”
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said a civilian working as a U.S. translator was also killed. The Iowa National Guard said Monday that three other Guard members were injured in the attack, with two in stable condition and one in good condition.
The attack is a major test of the rapprochement between the United States and Syria since the overthrow of authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad a year ago, and comes as the U.S. military is expanding cooperation with Syrian security forces. Hundreds of U.S. troops are deployed in eastern Syria as part of the coalition fighting Islamic State.
Saturday’s shooting in the Syrian desert near the historic city of Palmyra also wounded members of the country’s security forces and left the gunman dead. A Syrian official said the attacker joined Syria’s internal security forces two months ago as a security guard at the base and was recently redeployed amid suspicions he may have ties to the Islamic State.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nour al-Din Baba said on Sunday that the man burst into a meeting where U.S. and Syrian security officials were having lunch together and opened fire after clashing with Syrian guards.
Baba acknowledged the incident as a “major security breach” but said security forces had “succeeded far more often than they failed” in the year since Assad’s fall.
The Army said on Monday that the incident was under investigation, but military officials blamed the attack on an Islamic State member.
President Donald Trump said over the weekend that there would be “very harsh retaliation” for the attack, and Syrian President Ahmed Sala was “horrified by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. forces.
Trump last month welcomed Salad, who led the lightning rebels who overthrew Assad’s rule, to the White House for a historic meeting.
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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
