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Gunmen attacked a checkpoint of a U.S.-backed force in Syria early Tuesday in the northern town on Manbij, killing seven fighters, an official with the Kurdish-led group said. A war monitor blamed sleeper cells of the Islamic State group.
Sharfan Darwish of the Manbij Military Council told The Associated Press that it was unclear who was behind the attack, which came shortly after midnight at one of the entrances to Manbij. He said the "martyrs were carrying out their mission of protecting Manbij."
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said members of an IS sleeper cell carried out the attack, and that three other Manbij Military Council fighters were also wounded.
If IS was behind the attack, it would seem to indicate that the group can still launch deadly insurgent strikes and is far from being completely defeated, despite losing all the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria. IS was blamed for several attacks in the Manbij area in recent months.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack, but in January, IS claimed a suicide attack in Manbij that killed 19 people, including two U.S. service members and two American civilians.
The fate of Manbij, controlled by members of the Manbij Military Council whom Turkey considers terrorists, has been a source of tension between Ankara and Washington. Turkey insists on the withdrawal of the Syrian Kurdish-led militia, which liberated Manbij from the Islamic State group in 2016.