Backed SDF says has enough forces to take Syrian city of Raqqa

U.S. Marines were deployed to the area near Raqqa this week, and ISIS supply routes to the city have been cut off.

200 Marines were deployed to Syria in order to assist the US -backed local forces fighting ISIS, which are planning to launch a serious attack on Raqqa.

US forces are setting up an outpost some 20 miles south of the city, where they will establish an artillery battery that will fire powerful 155mm shells from M777 howitzers, in support of the coalition force’s offensive, according to Defense Department sources who spoke to the Washington Post.

At least 20 civilians, including some children, were killed in suspected USA -coalition airstrikes on a village east of the Islamic State group’s de-facto capital in Syria, activists reported Thursday.

Although he acknowledged the difficulties Turkey has with extremist leftist groups such as the Kurdish YPG in Syria, deemed to be a sister organisation to Turkey’s proscribed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Votel said that the United States was continuing to reduce tensions between both sides.

In a sign of advancing United States preparations for Raqqa, an American official said on Wednesday that a small group of Marines have entered Syria.

In Deir al-Zour, the SDF continued to advance against IS in the countryside of that oil-rich province, capturing four towns there on Friday following intense battles with IS, according to local Qasioun newspaper.

The official said the elusive leader, who appeared in public in Mosul in July 2014 to proclaim a “caliphate”, fled the former IS bastion some time before Iraqi security forces surrounded the city during an offensive to retake it.

The US colonel also said the campaign to isolate Raqqa is going “very, very well”, adding it could be completed in a few weeks.

“It is (sic) also violates the current Authorization for Use of Military Force”, said Lieu. In fact, the Financial Times notes that USA forces hung American flags on the gates of Manbij to send a signal that might prevent “a possible skirmish between the varied forces arrayed around the town”. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) have been used there in the past. The Marines were armed with 155-millimetre artillery guns. “If we go to Manbij and the PYD is there, we will hit them”.

The U.S. military is sending an additional 2,500 ground combat troops to a staging base in Kuwait from which they could be called upon to back up coalition forces battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The deployment to Syria doubles the size of US forces assisting Syrian Kurds in their effort to capture Raqqa, the nominal capital of the Islamic State, while the deployment to Kuwait brings USA forces in the Middle East to around 10,000.

In a swipe at Washington, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday it was unfortunate that some of Turkey’s allies had chosen the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as a partner in the fight against ISIS in Syria. The YPG denies this.

Ankara considers Kurdish militias in Syria affiliates of a Turkey-based insurgency and has attacked them on numerous occasions throughout the Syrian conflict.

Dorrian said a possible role for Turkey “remains a point of discussion at military leadership and diplomatic levels”.

“This is about providing options”, said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.