USA ‘intensifying’ campaign against ISIS in northern Syria: Obama

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The advance has shifted the focus of the fight from Iraq to Syria for the first time in months.

“Well, we are doing more in Syria from the air”.

“It’s very important that the manner in which effective and lasting defeat of ISIL will occur when there are effective local forces on the ground that we can support and enable so they can take territory, hold territory, and make sure good governance came in”, Carter told reporters earlier in the day before the meeting with Obama.

“ISIL is opportunistic, and it is nimble”, the president said.

Isil said at least 10 people were killed and many others wounded in the attacks that activists said triggered successive explosions that shook the city and created panic among residents. And rising tensions between Arabs in the area and their purported Kurdish liberators risk jeopardizing the gains.

“Our men and women are going to get paid”, Obama said, noting that US service members haven’t missed a paycheck since he took office.

“It’s time for Republicans in the Senate to do their jobs for a change”, Earnest said.

He said the United States was now “speeding up” the training of Iraqi forces.

He said that the United States would step up its counterterrorism operations in countries “from Afghanistan to Nigeria”.

Two entire divisions of the Iraqi Army broke in 2014 when the Islamic State rolled into the northern city of Mosul; the divisions left behind reams of American-provided weapons and armored vehicles as they fled. “This is where the focus on quick wins becomes problematic”.

On Monday, however, the IS launched a major offensive to regain ground lost to the Kurdish fighters. Instead, the Islamic State barely put up a fight.

The sustained airstrikes add pressure on the militants in Raqqa, still reeling from last month’s loss of the border town of Tal Abyad to Kurdish fighters.

Residents there reported signs of panic as the Islamic State dug trenches, appealed for volunteers in mosques, rounded up suspected dissidents and ordered thousands of Kurds in the city to leave.

But airstrikes could prove counterproductive over the long term if they are viewed as empowering groups alien or hostile to the local population, analysts say.

He reiterated that with a strong partner on the ground in Iraq, the USA and its partners would be successful in defeating the armed group.

President Barack Obama said Monday that while progress has been made against Daesh in Iraq and Syria, the fight against the militants requires patience.

Obama pointed to the more than 5,000 air strikes against ISIS in Iraq, Syria and new regions like North Africa, and the efforts of a “galvanized” Iraqi government in the wake of the fall of Ramadi, as signs of stepped-up efforts against the terrorist group.

American officials are also grappling with the widespread appeal of the extremist group, an al-Qaeda offshoot that has recruited fighters from around the world and has inspired attacks across the Middle East, in Europe and beyond.