SOF Pic of the Day: Remembering SAS and Delta Operators Killed by Friendly Fire in Syria

Initially, it was believed that Delta Force Master Sergeant Jonathan Dunbar and SAS commando Sgt. Matt Tonroe were killed by an ISIS-placed improvised explosive device while on an operation looking for high-value targets in northern Syria. The deaths occurred in March 2018.

US Special Operations Command validated a report from the UK Ministry of Defense, revealing the earlier account of US Army Master Sgt. Jonathan J. Dunbar’s death in a Syria raid was incorrect. It is now confirmed that Dunbar and  Tonroe of the Special Air Service Regiment were killed by the unintentional explosion of coalition forces’ own explosives.

Five other soldiers were injured in the incident.

Sergeant Matt Tonroe, before becoming a member of the elite Special Air Service (SAS), was trained as a sniper and paratrooper. He successfully completed the notoriously challenging SAS selection and reinforcement cycle. His death during the operation in Syria forced the British government to acknowledge the presence of British Special Operations Forces (SOF) within Syrian territory publicly. Prior to this, the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) had maintained that British forces were restricted to Iraq’s borders. This “limitation” was largely symbolic due to the ill-defined nature of the border between Syria and Iraq, and it was seen as a way to shield the British government from potential political backlash over having troops deployed inside Syria.

SOFREP originally wrote up that story and set the record straight here.

We reported:

While approaching their objective, Sergeant Dunbar, who was serving as a breacher, set off an IED that detonated explosives he was carrying on his person. Sergeant Tonroe and five other friendlies were caught in the blast, which resulted in the death of the SAS operator.

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This is not how one usually thinks of a friendly fire incident, but technically that is what happened.

Both men died a warrior’s death, taking the fight to the enemy.