The Green Village installation hosting coalition forces in Deir ez-Zor province was targeted on April 7, leaving four US service members injured, the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Levant confirmed in a statement, initially stating that it was due to “indirect fire.”
“The explosions in Green village were not the result of indirect fire but rather the deliberate placement of explosive charges by an unidentified individual(s) at an ammunition holding area and shower facility,” read a later statement from the coalition on Friday.
The coalition added that the incident remains under investigation, and that further information will be provided once available.
The Green Village site is located within areas controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), north of the Euphrates River with the regime forces operating across the river. Islamic State (ISIS) militants also remain active in the province.
Earlier in January, US forces foiled a rocket attack targeting the Green Village base, a day after the coalition said the base was targeted by eight rounds of indirect fire.
Establishing its so-called caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, ISIS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 by national forces and the coalition, which included more than 80 countries.
The group, however, still carries out attacks against security forces and civilians.
A Middle East Directions Programme policy brief into the resurgence of the group in Syria and Iraq, published earlier this month, found that the resurgence of ISIS in Iraq is less dramatic than in Syria, which it attributes to the, “strong resources of [the] Iraqi state and security regime established by PMF.”
In Syria, however, the report says the recent Hasaka prison attack "right in the heart of SDF-controlled territory" showed ISIS is still able to act in a centralised way and at a regional level, capable of mobilising its forces on the "wastelands between Syria and Iraq." The Syrian desert is central to ISIS’s resurgence, it adds, describing its sanctuary in the Syrian desert (al-Badia), south of the Euphrates.
