Syria: US sending 400 troops to bolster Raqqa offensive against Islamic State

Hundreds of heavily-armed U.S. Marines have poured into Syria to join the fight against ISIS.

“A defense official would not speak to the size of the detachment deployed to Syria, but said it included elements of multiple artillery batteries, as well as support personnel, including infantry Marines”, Military.com reported today.

Retaking Mosul will also be a symbolic victory after ISIS announced the birth of its “phony” caliphate from Mosul’s great mosque in 2014, the official said, noting that without a power base in Iraq, ISIS’ claims of legitimacy as a credible, alternative state are being exposed as a fallacy.

Turkey’s operation aims to drive Islamic State from the border and stop Kurdish militias from gaining ground in their wake.

USA commanders in Iraq and Syria would be free to decide when to use the new forces.

The Syrian government blames Turkey for “killing tens of thousands of its innocent sons and destroying Syrian infrastructure”, it added.

The Syrian Defense Forces – a US-supported coalition led by Kurds that includes Arab and Turkmen fighters – have been trying to isolate the northern Syrian city since November past year.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers the Syrian Kurdish YPG, or People’s Protection Units, to be a terrorist group linked to separatists in southeastern Turkey.

One former Obama administration official told FP that the strikes in Yemen and troop increases in Syria are “really more of a continuation than a departure from Obama administration counterterrorism policy”, albeit significantly accelerated from the ponderous way the Obama team made its decisions.

The latest deployment signals an emboldened USA military operation that has its sights set on a speedy offensive in Raqqa. “The current focus is Raqqa”, said Pentagon spokesman Col. John Thomas.

The assessment from the Pentagon comes as President Donald Trump weighs options Defense Secretary James Mattis is presenting to defeat ISIS fully, and those options could include increasing American forces inside Syria, where the effort is moving much more slowly than it has in Iraq. It is unclear though just what local forces would lead the push – and what kind of weapons the U.S. would supply them with.

The new deployment would be on top of troops already on the ground. About 4,000 ISIS terrorists are located within the city, according to US intelligence.

The situation became so severe that the United States deployed forces between the two to prevent them from fighting and to ensure the focus remains on ISIS.

In addition to “a detailed discussion” of the coalition’s priorities in advancing the military campaign, the ministers will address Iraq and Syria’s ongoing humanitarian crises.

The artillery will help “expedite the defeat of ISIS in Raqqa”, he said, using another acronym for Islamic State.