The United States military “hit the ISIS [ISIL] thugs in Syria,” President Donald Trump said in a speech Friday evening in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, a week after two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter were killed in Syria’s Palmyra city.

According to Al Jazeera’s Saturday report, Trump said he “ordered a massive strike on the terrorists that killed our three great patriots last week.”

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the AFP news agency that “at least five members” of ISIL were killed in eastern Syria’s Deir Az Zor province, including the leader of a cell responsible for drones in the area.

A Syrian source told AFP that the strikes targeted ISIL cells in Syria’s vast Badia desert, including in Homs, Deir Az Zor, and Raqqa provinces, and did not include ground operations.

Al Jazeera’s Ayman Oghanna, reporting from Damascus, said the strikes hit central and northeastern parts of the country. Local sources in Palmyra and Raqqa told Al Jazeera they heard the sounds of fighter jets and huge explosions throughout the night.

The U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), which has long overseen controversial and destabilizing operations across the Middle East, said it deployed “fighter jets, attack helicopters, and artillery” to launch “more than 100 precision munitions targeting known ISIS infrastructure and weapons sites.”

Earlier this month, three Americans – two U.S. National Guard members and a civilian interpreter – were reportedly killed in Palmyra by an attacker who targeted a convoy of U.S. and Syrian forces before being shot dead, according to the U.S. military.