Good evening. I'm John Yang. President Trump is vowing to avenge the deaths of two U.S. soldiers and an American civilian interpreter in Syria.

And U.S. officials tell PBS news, the shooter had ties to ISIS and had infiltrated Syrian security forces.

The Pentagon said the two soldiers, members of the Iowa National Guard, and the interpreter,

were ambushed by a lone gunman in the historic city of Palmyra, about 130 miles northeast of Damascus.

They were taking part in ongoing counterterrorism missions. The gunman was killed, and according to

the U.S. official, he was already under investigation for his ties to ISIS.

Mr. Trump paid tribute to the three as he left the White House this afternoon for the Army-Navy football game.

We mourn the loss. These are great, three great people.

And it's just a terrible thing.

We will retaliate. Thank you very much.

In 2019, during his first term, President Trump said ISIS and Syria had been defeated.

The U.S. kept about 2,000 troops in eastern Syria to clamp down on sleeper cells.

Belarus freed more than 100 prisoners after the United States said it would lift sanctions on the close ally of Russia.

Among those pardoned by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko were two opposition leaders and Alice Bialyotsky, who shared the 22 Nobel Peace Prize.

Earlier, U.S. Special Envoy John Cole said the United States would lift sanctions on pot-ash fertilizer, one of the nation's most important exports.

Cole said improving U.S. Belarusian relations could lead to more prisoner releases.

President Lukashenko, who should get a tremendous amount of credit for this, I think that he is moving. He wants a more normalized relationship with the United States and the West. So we're moving in that direction.

Lukashenko is an authoritarian leader known for dealing harshly with dissidents.

Western nations have sanctioned Belarus for cracking down on human rights and for letting

Russia use its territory to invade Ukraine.

And in Ukraine, an overnight barrage of Russian drone and missile attacks across the nation

left more than a million people without power in the harsh winter cold.

...