The U.S. Special Forces have shared new details of the battle against the Wagner PMC near Hasham in 2018.

On the night of February 7-8, one of the few direct clashes between Americans and Russians took place within the battle for the Conoco natural gas refinery on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.

The War Horse publication managed to talk with three soldiers who had fought in the battle.

The Americans estimated the total force of the advancing Russian mercenaries at the battalion level – about 500 soldiers and 27 vehicles.

The offensive began with shelling of the factory territory, using a mixture of tank fire, large artillery, and mortar rounds. Part of the artillery of the Russians was destroyed by MQ-1 Predator UAV missiles. After that, the American military officials worked to contact the Russians and urge them to stop the attack. However, the Russian Federation denied it was their forces.

On the U.S. side, the Quick Reaction Force (QRF), consisting of less than 50 Marines and Green Berets, and an unspecified number of allied units from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were opposed.

American Special Forces had at their disposal several Oshkosh M-ATVs and MRAPs mounted on an unnamed truck. Combat vehicles were armed with remote-controlled combat modules with 12.7×99 (.50 BMG) machine guns.

The enemy infantry managed to get to a distance of less than 1 km, but they were destroyed with machine-gun fire.

Then all 10 tanks went on the offensive. The Americans had no anti-tank weapons.

According to new data, two pairs of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters played a decisive role in defeating the Assadites and Russian mercenaries. It was the helicopters that managed to destroy 9 out of 10 tanks and 6 guns of the enemy armored group.

American Special Forces believe that the Russians lost about 350 soldiers killed that night. As previously reported, the Security Service of Ukraine published the names of 50 of them.

In contrast, no Americans were wounded during the battle.