The 38-year-old farmer was watering his maize in the scrubby vastness of eastern Syria when four Black Hawk helicopters swooped in low over the palm trees, heading from the border with Iraq formed by the Euphrates River.
It was late afternoon. The light was fading and the chill of the desert winter night was setting in. The helicopters, following their leader in a disciplined arc, hovered just above the one-storey concrete and mud homes of the village of Sukariyeh before the attack began.

Dubai – Syria has frozen its ties with Iraq following a cross-border attack by US forces on a Syrian village, the Dubai-based al-Arabiya news network reported Friday.
It said the Iraqi charge d’affaires had been summoned to the Syrian Foreign Ministry in Damascus and told that economic cooperation was being frozen, as was cooperation between security services.