At least 22 U.S. troops were injured in a helicopter accident in northeast Syria over the weekend, in what the Pentagon on Tuesday characterized as a “hard landing.”
The MH-47 Chinook, a transport aircraft used by U.S. Special Operations forces for nighttime raids and other sensitive missions, experienced a problem with one of its rotors during takeoff, said Sabrina Singh, a Defense Department spokeswoman.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military activity in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, said in a separate statement released late Monday that the incident “resulted in injuries of various degrees,” with 10 personnel requiring medical evacuation to “higher care facilities” outside the war-torn country.
Singh said all of those injured are in stable condition.
The accident’s cause is under investigation, although the statement noted that “no enemy fire was reported.”
Violence has devastated Syria for more than a decade, with a brutal civil war forcing millions of refugees to flee and causing political turmoil in the region. In 2014, a U.S.-led coalition battled the Islamic State militant group, known as ISIS, and largely extinguished its self-declared caliphate, which took over swaths of Iraq and Syria.
The counterterrorism mission there endures, though. U.S. military officials said in a news release earlier this month that American and partner forces conducted 38 operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in May alone. Eight ISIS “operatives” were killed as a result, and 31 were detained, officials said.
The past three U.S. administrations have maintained a small contingent of U.S. troops in Syria — about 900 at any given time, augmented by hundreds more contractors — to prevent a resurgence by ISIS militants in the country, thwart Iranian and Russian ambitions, and provide leverage for other strategic objectives.
This month, Kurdish-led authorities, who control much of northeastern Syria, said they would put hundreds of ISIS fighters on trial. Tens of thousands of foreign nationals have been languishing in prisons there for allegedly having ties to the Islamic State. Kurdish authorities and detainees’ relatives have implored governments to accept their citizens back. Citing security concerns, many countries have dragged their feet — or, in some cases, revoked detainees’ citizenship.
Meanwhile, intelligence officials and leaked classified documents have shown that Iran may be arming militants in Syria for a new phase of lethal attacks against U.S. troops in the country, The Washington Post reported this month. Such attacks could constitute an escalation of Tehran’s long-running campaign of using proxy militias to launch rocket and drone strikes on U.S. forces in Syria.
In March, a U.S. contractor was killed and multiple American troops were wounded when what was described as a self-detonating drone struck a military outpost in the northeast. The attack by suspected Iranian proxies provoked a ferocious response, with U.S. warplanes pounding facilities in Syria that officials said were associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Joby Warrick, Evan Hill and Claire Parker contributed to this report.