TWO coalition personnel, including one Briton, have been killed and five others wounded by a roadside bomb in Syria, the US military said.
It is a rare such attack since the US-led coalition sent troops into the war-torn country.
The explosion is reported to have taken place in the town of Manbij, 60 miles north east of Aleppo and close to the border with Turkey.
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The UK casualty was embedded with US forces when they were caught by an explosion on Thursday, the Ministry of Defence said. An American soldier was also killed by a blast while deployed against Daesh.
The MoD spokesman gave no information regarding the casualty’s service branch, unit, gender or where in Syria the explosion happened. But media reports suggested it was a male special forces soldier.
The spokesman said: “It is with regret that we must confirm that a member of the UK armed forces was killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria yesterday.
“The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred. The family has been notified and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.”
US military spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon initially said he could not immediately comment on who was behind the attack.
He added: “There is an investigation under way to identify who they could possibly be.
“We have our initial assessment and thoughts on that but we won’t provide until the investigation is complete.”
Manbij is under threat from a Turkish military operation. Ankara says Syrian Kurdish militiamen it views as “terrorists” and an extension of Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey are in control of the town.
The US military statement said the attack happened on Thursday night and that the wounded were being evacuated for further medical treatment.
Mohammed Abu Adel, head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish group in the town backed by the US, said the bomb went off hundreds of metres from a security headquarters that houses the council just before midnight on Thursday.
Local officials blame Turkey and other adversaries for seeking to sow chaos in the town that was controlled by Daesh militants until the summer of 2016. The military council has since been in control and US troops patrol the town and area with troops based nearby.
Meanwhile, near the capital Damascus, there were conflicting reports on whether a main rebel group will evacuate the largest and last rebel-held town in the area, known as eastern Ghouta.
Col Gen Sergei Rudskoi, of the Russian military’s general staff, said yesterday at briefing that the agreement envisages Army of Islam rebels and their families leaving the Syrian town of Douma, just outside Damascus.
The announcement came after the Syrian government on Wednesday issued a three-day ultimatum to the Army of Islam group to leave Douma or face an all-out offensive.
Syrian state TV said an agreement is about to be reached for an Army of Islam evacuation but the group denied the reports.
Army of Islam military spokesman Hamza Bayraqdar said that the reports are false, adding that his group’s stance is to reject displacement and demographic change in eastern Ghouta.
The Syrian government and the Russian military backing it have demanded that Army of Islam members leave the area for northern Syria, following other rebels who left eastern Ghouta.
Rudskoi said more than 143,000 people, including 13,793 rebels and 23,544 members of their families, have left eastern Ghouta.
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