2019 Manbij bombing

Background

During the Syrian civil war, the city of Manbij changed hands several times: it was taken by the Free Syrian Army in 2012, then by ISIS in 2014, and finally by the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during the 2016 Manbij offensive. The Palace of the Princes restaurant, located on a crowded downtown street in Manbij, was popular with American personnel; U.S. senators Lindsey Graham and Jeanne Shaheen had eaten there during a visit to Syria in July 2018.

The Attack

Around midday on Wednesday, 16 January 2019, several American military personnel were inside the Palace of Princes restaurant when a suicide bomber mixed into a crowd near a nearby vegetable market and detonated an explosive vest close to the restaurant entrance. The blast produced a fireball, leaving dead and wounded scattered in the street. Rescue workers transported the wounded to hospital, and military helicopters landed on a nearby soccer field to evacuate dead and wounded Americans and civilians to medical facilities.

Casualties

The U.S. Department of Defense released a statement on 18 January 2019 identifying three of its personnel killed in the attack: a soldier, a sailor, and an intelligence officer. Defense contractor Valiant Integrated Services separately identified a fourth American killed, an employee of the company. The four deceased Americans were Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan R. Farmer, Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) Shannon M. Kent, DOD civilian intelligence officer Scott A. Wirtz, and civilian contractor Ghadir (Jasmine) Taher, who worked as an interpreter for U.S. troops in Syria. The overall death toll is believed to be 19, including 15 local SDF fighters. Three additional American servicemen were injured. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Aftermath

U.S. President Donald Trump paid tribute to the four fallen Americans during a visit to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on 19 January 2019, where their remains were received. Five days after the Manbij bombing, a second joint convoy of U.S. and allied Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria was struck in al-Hasakah; there were no serious casualties, though two Kurdish fighters were lightly wounded in that blast.