Syrian Who Killed Us Soldiers Was Security Guard

The gunman who killed two members of the Iowa National Guard and an American civilian interpreter in an attack in Palmyra, central Syria, on Saturday was a member of the Syrian government’s security forces, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) first reported that the attacker was a member of the security forces and called for the Syrian government, which is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, to get rid of members who have an "ISIS ideology."

The Syrian Interior Ministry claimed that, before the attack, Syrian authorities had "decided to fire him" for having "extremist Islamist ideology" and had planned to do so on Sunday. "We discovered him in December and were going to dismiss him, but we didn’t make it in time because it was a holiday," said ministry spokesman Nour al-Din al-Baba, according to The Cradle.

A Syrian security official told AFP that the attacker had been in the security forces "for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra."

According to Wael Essam, a Palestinian journalist who has covered the conflict in Syria for many years, the perpetrator has been identified as Tariq Satouf al-Hamd from the Aleppo countryside. Essam said that al-Hamd was previously a member of ISIS, but after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad, he traveled to Idlib, the former home base of HTS, and joined the General Security.

The attack occurred when US military officers were meeting with Syrian Interior Ministry officials while US and Syrian troops stood guard at a base near the city of Palmyra. According to The Wall Street Journal, a lone gunman appeared in a window and opened fire on the US and Syrian soldiers, and he was pursued by Syrian troops and killed. However, according to Essam’s report, the attacker blew himself up.

"The attacker tried to reach the meeting room in the headquarters of the General Security in Palmyra (formerly the Military Security headquarters) where senior officers are present, and in the corridor he clashed with the American guards and the translator and blew himself up," Essam wrote on X.

Essam also suggested that other members of the Syrian security forces were involved in the attack. "Security sources confirmed to me that Syrian intelligence, along with the Coalition forces, arrested six elements from the General Security at the headquarters in Palmyra, accused of coordinating the operation with him, and it is said that they are from the group that moved with him from the desert to the General Security in Idlib," he said.

He added that Syrian authorities were “unable to identify his previous affiliation with the organization (ISIS), and there are hundreds like him, due to the large numbers who joined and which the security apparatus needed after the fall of the regime.”