Obama to Deploy Special Forces to Syria
In a major change of policy, the Obama administration has said it will send nearly 50 special operations troops to northern Syria starting next month to advise opposition forces in their battle against the self-proclaimed Islamic State group, Reuters reports.
In its announcement Friday, the White House said the troops will be on the ground to “train, advise and assist” local forces in their battle against ISIS. A spokesman for the White House declined to give specifics about the deployment.
The decision to commit to a sustained troop presence in Syria marks a significant change in Obama’s strategy in Syria, a conflict in which the president has been publically averse to involving U.S. troops since it began more than four and a half years ago.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the deployment is open-ended and did not dismiss the possibility of sending additional troops to either Iraq or Syria in the future.
The new U.S. forces in Syria will be stationed in rebel-held areas to coordinate supply drops to rebels and to resupply rebel forces as they head toward the de facto ISIS capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, U.S. officials told Reuters.
ISIS Takes Syrian Town as Fighting Escalates
ISIS militants took over a town in western Syria on Sunday, driving out Syrian government forces as ground fighting intensified over the weekend after global stakeholders met on Friday in Vienna in efforts to end the ongoing violence in Syria.
ISIS began its assault Sunday on the town of Maheen, in southwest Homs province, by exploding two car bombs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters.
The Observatory reported that nearly 50 government troops were either killed or wounded.
While Syrian state media failed to mention Sunday’s attacks, an ISIS statement said the advance had brought its group within 20km of Syria’s major north-south highway that links the capital with Homs, Hama and Aleppo.
As ISIS advances in western Syria, they are the target of a new ground offensive staged by U.S.-backed rebels in the northeastern Hasaka province.
Reports by the Observatory showed intense ground fighting between ISIS militants and fighters connected to the newly established U.S.-backed rebel alliance, including militia members of the Kurdish YPG, in the al-Houl area near Syria’s border with Iraq.
At Least 70 Killed in Douma Market Attack
At least 70 people were killed and nearly 550 injured in airstrikes Friday on an outdoor market in the rebel-held city of Douma, according to a report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
“This was an extremely violent-bombing,” the director of an MSF-supported hospital in the area told the AFP. “The wounds were worse than anything we’ve seen before … We had to do many amputations,” he said.
“We did our best to cope, but the number of critically wounded was far beyond what we could handle with our limited means.”
The MSF-supported medical facility was the only one in the area, as the only other hospital in the area had been targeted by airstrikes Thursday, killing 15 people.
“The devastation caused by the initial airstrike on the market was exacerbated by further shelling on the rescue teams who were attending to the wounded,” MSF said.
Recommended Reads
- The Guardian: U.S. Special Forces in Syria are Obama’s Latest Broken Foreign Policy Promise
- Foreign Policy: Boots on the Ground: U.S. Special Forces Heading to Syria
- The Washington Post: They Freed a Syrian Town From ISIS. Now They Have to Govern It.
- The Associated Press: Analysis: Russian Goals in Syria Defined by Timing
- The Washington Post: Boots On the Ground in Syria Have Lawmakers Calling for a New AUMF
Top image: U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, left, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, second left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, third right, meet with foreign ministers for talks on Syria at a hotel in Vienna, Austria, Friday, Oct. 30, 2015. (Brendan Smialowski/Pool Photo via AP)