The approximately 1,000 US troops withdrawing from northern Syria are expected to join western Iraq to continue fighting ISIS fighters and "help defend" the country, announced on Saturday. October, the US Secretary of Defense.
Speaking to journalists accompanying him on a US military plane bound for the Middle East, Mark Esper said the withdrawal of US troops from northeastern Syria was a matter of weeks, and not no days.
He announced last Sunday that the United States had decided to withdraw the thousand soldiers present in northern Syria after learning that the offensive launched four days earlier by Turkey intensified.
"The current plan for these soldiers is a redeployment in western Iraq," said the Pentagon chief, although it is unclear whether the US military will lead offensives from Iraq. on the ground in Syria and airstrikes against ISIS. A senior Defense Department official said the situation could change and the plans changed.
US maintains contact with Kurds
The deployment of additional troops to Iraq would augment a contingent of 5,000 soldiers already in the country to train the Iraqi security forces and help prevent the resurgence of IS.
Mark Esper said the five-day break in Northeast Syria agreed last Thursday by US Vice President Mike Pence and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "globally" respected. "We are seeing a stabilization of the lines (...) We are informed intermittently shooting (...) This does not necessarily surprise me," he added.
The defense secretary said that the United States maintains contact with the Kurds of the People's Protection Units (YPG), allies of Washington in the fight against the IS that are the target of the offensive launched by Ankara, and that Kurdish forces continued to defend the prisons they still controlled in northeastern Syria.
With Reuters