Howard, Torres-Tovar and Sakat were killed in the city of Palmyra in central Syria. They were deployed to the country as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, a military task force the Defense Department established in 2014 to combat the rise of ISIS in the region.

Syria’s government and its allies have welcomed the lifting of sanctions imposed by the U.S. Congress in 2019 to punish then-President Bashar Assad for human rights abuses