A Favorite Restaurant in Syria Led ISIS to Americans – The New York Times

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On Wednesday, one such patrol dropped in for a late lunch. Cars were double-parked in front of the restaurant and the sidewalks were full of people visiting the nearby vegetable market, according to residents and surveillance footage posted online.

A suicide bomber mixed into the crowd and detonated his explosive vest near the restaurant entrance. A fireball erupted in front of the restaurant, yanking down its sign, toppling the rotisserie and leaving the dead and wounded scattered in the street, according to witnesses and videos posted online.

“We saw civilians on the ground, kids, soldiers, fire still blazing in the shop,” Ahmed Himo, a local journalist, said by phone on Thursday. “It was a terrible scene.”

Ahmad Sulaiman, 12, was passing the restaurant on the way to his grandfather’s house when the blast happened.

“When I passed, there was the man who makes the shawarma sandwiches,” Ahmad said while being treated for leg injuries in a hospital. “Then fire flashed and disappeared and the man was no longer there.”

While rescue workers rushed the wounded to the hospital, three helicopters appeared in the sky, Mr. Himo said. One tried to land in the street but it was too narrow, so it landed on a soccer field nearby. The dead and wounded Americans were taken there and flown away.

On Friday the Pentagon identified three of the Americans who were killed as Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Fla., a Special Forces soldier, or Green Beret; Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon M. Kent, 35, of New York State, who was in the Navy; and Scott A. Wirtz, a Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employee, of St. Louis, Mo.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/world/middleeast/syria-bombing-manbij-attack.html

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