Helicopter accident in northeastern Syria injures 22 U.S. troops

BEIRUT —  A helicopter accident in northeastern Syria over the weekend left 22 American service members injured, the U.S. military said Tuesday, adding that the cause was under investigation and no hostile fire was involved.

The military statement said the service members were receiving treatment and 10 were moved to “higher care facilities” outside the region.

“A helicopter mishap in northeastern Syria resulted in the injuries of various degrees of 22 U.S. service members,” it said. “No enemy fire was reported.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said at a media briefing that the mishap involved a single MH-47 Chinook helicopter. The Chinook “had a problem with one rotor that caused a hard landing during takeoff,” Singh said.

All of the service members involved in the crash were stable, she said.

A spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

At least 900 U.S. forces are in Syria, on average, along with an undisclosed number of contractors. U.S. special operations forces also move in and out of the country, but are usually in small teams and are not included in the official count.

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U.S. forces have been in Syria since 2015 to advise and assist the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the fight against the militant group Islamic State. Since the extremist group was defeated in Syria in March 2019, U.S. troops have been trying to prevent any comeback by Islamic State, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014, taking control of large swaths of territory.

However, Islamic State sleeper cells remain a threat. About 10,000 of the group’s fighters are held in detention facilities in Syria and tens of thousands of their family members live in two refugee camps in the country’s northeast.

Over the previous years, U.S. troops have been subjected to attacks carried out by Islamic State members and Iran-backed fighters there. In late March, a drone attack on a U.S. base killed a contractor and wounded five American troops and another contractor. In retaliation, U.S. fighter jets struck several locations around the eastern province of Dair Alzour, which borders Iraq.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said at the time that the strikes were a response to the drone attack as well as a series of recent attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

In a related development, Syrian Kurdish-led authorities announced Saturday that hundreds of Islamic State fighters held in prisons around the region will be put on trial after their home countries refused to repatriate them.

Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.