BEIRUT — In Syria, 37 militants linked to the Islamic State extremist group and an al-Qaeda-linked group were killed in two strikes, the US military said on Sunday.
Two of the dead were senior militants, it said.
US Central Command said it struck northwest Syria on Tuesday, targeting a senior militant from the al-Qaida-linked Hurras al-Deen group and eight others. They say he was responsible for overseeing military operations.
They also announced an attack from earlier this month on September 16, in which they carried out a “large-scale airstrike” on an IS training camp in a remote, undisclosed location in central Syria. That attack killed 28 militants, including “at least four Syrian leaders.”
“The airstrike will disrupt ISIS’s ability to conduct operations against US interests, as well as our allies and partners,” the statement said.
There are about 900 US forces in Syria, along with an unknown number of contractors, mostly trying to prevent a comeback by the extremist IS group, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014 and seized control of large swaths of territory.
US forces are advising and assisting their key allies in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which are not far from strategic areas where Iran-backed militant groups are based, including a key border crossing with Iraq.