ISIS-affiliated Syrian who killed 3 Americans was member of new gov’t’s security forces

Syrian authorities said they arrested five people linked to an attack that killed three Americans on Saturday, which was carried out by a member of the Syrian government’s security forces who had affiliations with the terror group ISIS.

The five suspects were arrested in the central Syrian town of Palmyra, the site of the attack, on Sunday.

A gunman had opened fire at a convoy of U.S. and Syrian security forces, killing two U.S. soldiers and an American civilian interpreter while wounding three additional soldiers. Syria’s state news agency SANA said two Syrian service personnel were also injured.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal citing Syrian and U.S. officials, the attacker was close to being fired shortly before launching the attack, after being marked for holding extremist views. Syrian authorities are now investigating whether he had direct ties or if he only adopted the ideology of ISIS.

The incident highlighted Israel’s concerns that many of the Syrian regime’s forces remain beholden to an extreme Islamist ideology. The new government haphazardly integrated dozens of terror groups into is security forces following the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024.

Even before taking power, President Ahmad al-Sharaa has long fought against more extremist terror groups and recently announced his troops would join the U.S.-led alliance against the resurgent remnants of ISIS.

A senior U.S. official told the WSJ that the U.S. troops were in Palmyra to guard a meeting between a local U.S. commander and a Syrian Interior Ministry official about countering ISIS.

Despite the moderate messaging by Sharaa and the overwhelmingly positive reaction to him, including in the U.S., Israeli leaders have consistently highlighted the regime forces’ Islamist ideology.

This is the main reason Israel has refused to withdraw from the buffer zone in the Syrian Golan Heights, demanding Syria agree to keep the entire south of the country up to the capital Damascus, demilitarized.

Almost exactly one year ago, Sharaa, then still known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had led the rebel alliance made up of mainly Islamist groups, many of them designated terror organizations and led by his own Islamist Hay’at Tahrir-al-Sham, to overthrow the decades-long regime led by the Assad clan.

In the aftermath, he cobbled together the dozens of armed groups to create the new security forces, but questions remained about the troops’ loyalty, discipline, and their lingering ideology, which prominently features hatred of Jews and other minorities.

Some of these groups took part in the attacks and massacres against the country’s Alawite, Christian and Druze communities in recent months. Several weeks ago, reports indicated that members of the security forces were also involved in the ambush that wounded six Israeli soldiers during an arrest of terrorists in a Syrian village.

Despite the Israeli concerns, the Trump administration has embraced Sharaa’s new regime, seeking to turn Syria into a linchpin of its regional alliance network after it had served a central node for the Iranian terror proxy network for the past decades.

“Our strategy is to enable capable Syrian partners, with limited U.S. operational support, to hunt down ISIS networks, deny them safe haven, and prevent their resurgence,” Trump’s Syria envoy Tom Barrack said on Sunday. “The recent attack doesn’t invalidate that strategy; it reinforces it.”

Barrack is expected to arrive in Israel on Monday for discussions with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials.

In addition to tensions between Jerusalem and Washington over Syria, Barrack recently angered Israeli officials after he appeared to suggest that Israel only “claimed” to be a democracy in recent remarks.

Israel reportedly conveyed to the U.S. that Barrack’s remarks were unacceptable and undermine the trust required for managing sensitive diplomatic negotiations.

Channel 12 News cited political sources expressing general dissatisfaction with Barrack in Israel, saying he is perceived as not being sensitive to Israel’s security needs as he has been strongly urging Israel to withdraw in exchange for a new agreement of disengagement.

In addition to the Syrian issue, where Barrack recently said he remained positive that Jerusalem and Damascus would eventually sign a security arrangement, he is also involved in talks about the Gaza ceasefire in his capacity as ambassador to Turkey.

He is reportedly advocating for the inclusion of Turkish troops in the International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza, which Israel has described as a “red line.”