ISIS WILL be defeated in Syria within a month, says military commander - five weeks after Trump said the terror group had been eliminated in the country
A top military commander has said ISIS will be defeated in Syria within a month - five weeks after Donald Trump said the terror group had been eliminated in the country.
Mazloum Kobani, chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said the last remaining jihadists will soon be flushed out and military operations against the extremists wrapped up.
It comes five weeks after the US President tweeted: 'We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.' But Kobani told AFP: 'The operation of our forces against IS in its last pocket has reached its end and IS fighters are now surrounded in one area.'
With backing from the US-led coalition, the SDF are in the last phase of an operation started on September 10 to defeat the jihadists in the Euphrates Valley in eastern Syria.
There was widespread concern after his shock announcement on December 19 that he was withdrawing all 2,000 American troops from the conflict-wracked Middle Eastern country.
'We need a month to eliminate IS remnants still in the area,' said Kobani, who spoke to AFP on Thursday near the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh.
A few hundred ISIS fighters are defending a handful of hamlets near the Iraqi border, the last rump of a 'caliphate' which the jihadist organisation proclaimed in 2014 and once covered territory the size of Britain.
'I believe that during the next month we will officially announce the end of the military presence on the ground of the so-called caliphate,' Kobani said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6631157/IS-caliphate-Syria-defeated-month-commander.html