Roadside bomb in Syria kills 2 coalition troops and wounds 5 near Turkey
Explosion rang out near town's security headquarters just before midnight, local official says
The U.S. military said Friday that two coalition personnel were killed and five were wounded by a roadside bombing in Syria.
The military did not say where the incident occurred but it came hours after a local Syrian official said that a roadside bomb has exploded in the tense, mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij that is not far from the border with Turkey.
The U.S. military statement said the incident occurred on Thursday night and that the wounded personnel were being evacuated for further medical treatment. The coalition statement said details pertaining to the incident were being withheld pending an investigation.
It did not identify the casualties as American soldiers, only coalition personnel members.
The local Syrian official, Mohammed Abu Adel, the head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish U.S.-backed group in the town, said the bomb went off hundreds of metres away from a security headquarters that houses the council, just before midnight on Thursday.
Manbij is under threat of a Turkish military operation. Ankara says Syrian-Kurdish militiamen it views as "terrorists" and an extension of Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey is in control of the town.
The town has also seen a number of small explosions, protests and an assassination attempt on a member of the Manbij military council in recent weeks. Local officials blame Turkey and other adversaries for seeking to sow chaos in the town that was controlled by Islamic state militants until the summer of 2016.
The U.S.-backed backed Kurdish-Arab Manbij military council has been in control since then, and U.S. troops patrol the town and area with troops based nearby.