Americans killed in Syria no strangers to war

Islamic State claimed credit for Wednesday’s suicide bomb attack.

The four Americans who were killed by a suicide bomber in Syria on Wednesday were no strangers to America’s war zones overseas.

One was a top military linguist who worked closely with the National Security Agency and was on her eighth deployment. One was a hard-pounding rebounder on his high school basketball team who joined the Army Special Forces and served a halfdozen times in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. And one was a former member of the Navy SEALs who later supervised the collection of intelligence for a Pentagon agency.

A fourth American killed — Ghadir Taher, 27, from East Point, Ga. — was an Arabic interpreter who spent much of her childhood living in Syria and worked for a private defense contractor.

Before Wednesday, there had been only two American combat deaths in Syria since 2015. The suicide bombing in a restaurant in Manbij in northern Syria came shortly after President Trump called for a pullout of American troops from the country, asserting that the Islamic State — which claimed credit for the attack — had been “largely defeated.”

Senior military officials said Friday they had started to withdraw some nonessential equipment and were still preparing to pull out about 2,000 troops over the next four to six months. But it was not clear whether conditions on the ground would dictate the pace of withdrawal, as John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, said this month.

The attack came as eight Americans were meeting local leaders. Three of those Americans were wounded in the blast, which prompted American forces throughout northern Syria to increase operational security measures.