Overview
- Operation Hawkeye Strike hit roughly 70 ISIS sites in central Syria using fighter jets, attack helicopters and rocket artillery after two U.S. soldiers and a U.S. interpreter were killed near Palmyra.
- CENTCOM said aircraft, helicopters and artillery expended over 100 precision munitions, with strikes reported in rural Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and the Jabal al-Amour area near Palmyra.
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the campaign a reprisal rather than the start of a new war, and officials indicated additional strikes could follow.
- In the Caribbean, U.S. forces detained a second oil tanker in less than two weeks after the earlier seizure of the Skipper, as the administration intensifies enforcement against sanctioned Venezuelan exports.
- SOUTHCOM separately confirmed lethal actions against two boats near Venezuela, reporting five more deaths and bringing the toll in similar maritime operations to at least 104, as legal and human-rights scrutiny grows over evidence and authority for the strikes.