The US says its military has carried out a “massive strike” against the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria, in response to a deadly attack on American forces in the country.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Operation Hawkeye Strike was aimed at eliminating IS “fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites”.
Fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery hit multiple targets in central Syria, US officials told CBS, the BBC’s media partner in the US. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.
In a post on X late on Friday, Hegseth wrote: “This is not the beginning of a war – it is a declaration of vengeance. The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people.
“If you target Americans – anywhere in the world – you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.
“Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue,” the US defence secretary added.
Meanwhile, the US Central Command (Centcom) said that “US forces have commenced a large-scale strike” against IS, adding that more information would be provided soon.
Posting on Truth Social later on, President Trump said the US “is inflicting very serious retaliation, just as I promised, on the murderous terrorists responsible”.
He said the Syrian government was “fully in support”.
Meanwhile, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OBHR) said IS positions near the cities of Raqqa and Deir ez Zor were targeted.
It said that a prominent IS leader and a number of fighters were killed.
IS has not publicly commented. The BBC was unable to verify the targets immediately.
Centcom, which directs American military operations in Europe, Africa and the Indo-Pacific, earlier said that the deadly attack in Palmyra was carried out by an IS gunman, who was “engaged and killed”.
Another three US soldiers were injured in the ambush, with a Pentagon official saying that it happened “in an area where the Syrian president does not have control.”
At the same time, the SOHR said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security forces.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the identity of the gunman has not been released.
A photo released by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement showing Kemal Mrndzic (right) on 2 November 1992
The US justice department has launched a civil legal case against a man accused of being a Bosnian war criminal to revoke his citizenship.
Kemal Mrndzic did not disclose during his US immigration process that he served as a guard at Bosnia’s notorious Celebici prison camp, where atrocities were committed, the department said.
A UN war crimes tribunal found that people held in the camp during the Bosnian war were killed, tortured, sexually assaulted, beaten and subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment.
US President Donald Trump’s administration would not allow people who “persecute others” to “reap the benefits of refuge in the US”, justice department official Brett Shumate said.
The assistant attorney general added that the legal case showed the value that the US government placed on “the integrity of its naturalisation process”.
Mrndzic was found guilty by a jury in October 2024 on several counts of criminal fraud and misrepresentation in relation to his successful application for a US passport and naturalisation certificate.
He failed to disclose to immigration authorities the nature and timing of his military service, or that “he persecuted Bosnian-Serb inmates as a prison guard”, the justice department said.
Mrndzic was sentenced in January 2025 to more than five years in prison.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
A set of photos that appear to show Kemal Mrndzic through the years, from 1992 to 2019, released by US officials
The Bosnian war followed the break-up of Soviet Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and led to the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995.
Srebrenica, recognised by the UN as a genocide, became known as Europe’s worst mass atrocity since World War Two, after Bosnian-Serb forces systematically murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.
The Celebici prison camp was operated by Bosniak and Bosnian-Croat forces, who were also responsible for widespread killings in areas they controlled.
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was tried for war crimes and genocide, and the massacre led to the US-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement on 14 December 1995.
Watch: Putin tells BBC Western leaders deceived Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said there will be no more wars after Ukraine if Russia is treated with respect – and claims that Moscow is planning to attack European countries were “nonsense”.
In a televised event lasting almost four and a half hours, he was asked by the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg whether there would be new “special military operations” – Putin’s term for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“There won’t be any operations if you treat us with respect, if you respect our interests just as we’ve always tried to respect yours,” he asserted.
Earlier this month, Putin said Russia was not planning to go to war with Europe, but was ready “right now” if Europeans wanted to.
Answering a question from the BBC Russia editor on Friday, Putin also added the condition that there would be no further Russian invasions “if you don’t cheat us like you cheated us with Nato’s eastward expansion”.
He has long accused Nato of going back on an alleged 1990 Western promise to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev before the fall of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev later denied the remark had been made.
The “Direct Line” marathon combined questions from the public at large and journalists from across Russia in a Moscow hall, with Putin sitting beneath an enormous map of Russia that encompassed occupied areas of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Russian state TV claimed more than three million questions had been submitted.
Just hours after the televised marathon, Ukrainian officials said seven people were killed and a further 15 injured in a Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
EPA
Organisers of the event said three million questions had been submitted to Putin
Although the “Direct Line” was largely choreographed, some critical comments from the public appeared on a big screen, including one that referred to the event as a “circus”, another bemoaning internet outages and one that highlighted poor-quality tap water. Mobile internet outages have been blamed by authorities on Ukrainian drone attacks.
Putin also addressed Russia’s faltering economy, with prices rising, growth on the slide and VAT going up from 20 to 22% on 1 January. One message to the president read: “Stop the crazy rise in prices on everything!”
The Kremlin regularly uses the end-of-year event to highlight the resilience of the economy and, as Putin spoke, Russia’s central bank announced it was lowering interest rates to 16%.
Foreign policy issues were mixed with musings about the motherland, praise for local businesses, fish prices and the importance of looking after veterans.
But the issue of almost four years of full-scale war in Ukraine was never far away and it was often in the background of many of the questions.
Putin again claimed to be “ready and willing” to end the war in Ukraine “peacefully” but offered little sign of compromise.
He repeated his insistence on principles he had outlined in a June 2024 speech, when he demanded that Ukrainian forces leave four regions Russia partially occupies and that Kyiv gives up its efforts to join Nato.
Chief among Russia’s demands is full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, including about 23% of Donetsk region which Russia has not been able to occupy.
Putin argued Russian forces were making advances across the front line in Ukraine and he ridiculed Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the front line at Kupiansk last week, when the Ukrainian leader was able to refute Russia claims that it had captured the town.
Putin has also demanded new elections in Ukraine to be included in the peace proposals that US President Donald Trump has submitted as part of his efforts to bring the conflict to an end. At his news conference, Putin offered to stop bombing Ukraine when voting took place.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Friday it had for the first time hit an oil tanker operating as part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Mediterranean. Putin said it would not lead to the result that Kyiv wanted and would not disrupt Russian exports.
Most of the questions from Russian media or from the public made little attempt to challenge Putin, but two were allowed from Western correspondents, Keir Simmons of US network NBC and the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg.
When Simmons asked if Putin would feel responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians and Russians if he rejected the Trump peace plan, Putin praised the US president’s “sincere” efforts to end the war, but said it was the West not Russia that was blocking a deal.
“The ball is in the hands of our Western opponents,” he said, “primarily the leaders of the Kyiv regime, and in this case, first and foremost, their European sponsors.”
Trump has said a peace deal is closer than ever and, despite Putin’s apparent refusal to compromise, the US president has said he hopes “Ukraine moves quickly because Russia is there”.
A Ukrainian delegation is holding talks in Miami on Friday with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. German, French and British officials are also there, days after they met the US officials in Berlin.
Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev is also expected in Miami over the weekend, according to reports.
Putin told the BBC’s Russia Editor: “We are ready to work with you – with the UK and with Europe in general and with the United States, but as equals, with mutual respect to each other.
“We are ready to cease these hostilities immediately, provided that Russia’s medium- and long-term security is ensured, and we are ready to cooperate with you.”
He accused the West of creating an enemy out of Russia. Skating over his decision to mount a full-scale invasion in February 2022, he said: “You are waging a war against us with the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis,” before repeating his regular diatribe against Ukraine’s democratically elected leaders.
European intelligence agencies have warned that Russia is only a few years away from attacking Nato. The Western defensive alliance’s chief Mark Rutte said this month that Russia was already escalating a covert campaign and the West had to be prepared for war.
While many of the questions were benign, including several from children, from a one reporter from Yakutia in north-eastern Siberia highlighted a tenfold increase in energy prices in the past four years. Putin told her that his team would look into alternative sources of energy and “keep Yakutia in mind”.
Towards the end of the TV marathon, Putin was asked a series of quickfire questions, touching on his views on friendship, religion, the motherland and love at first sight. He said he believed in love at first sight – then added that he himself was in love, without divulging any more details.
