Islamic State will be uprooted by next week, claims Trump
The terror group holds only a few villages in the Euphrates valley
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the Islamic State (IS) group will be deprived of all of the territories it has held by “next week” and most of its top leaders and officials have been eliminated, and those that remain will be hunted down by American troops working with coalition partners.
“It should be formally announced sometime probably next week that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate,” the US president said in an address to diplomats and officials of the 30 countries that form the Global Coalition to defeat ISIS (Islamic State of Syria and Iraq - another name for the IS).
Trump went on to reiterate his decision to bring back the 2,000 US troops deployed in Syria, which does not have much buy-in from his military commanders and US diplomats.
Former defence secretary Jame Mattis had quit in protest, and other officials have publicly disputed the US president’s assessment of the situation in Syria.
“We look forward to giving our brave warriors in Syria a warm welcome back home,” Trump said, even as he warned that the “remnants” - as he called the surviving IS fighters - “can be very dangerous”.
US military and intelligence officials have said that while the militant group has been diminished significantly, it is far from being routed completely and that they could be lying low for now and try to re-emerge as a force in the vacuum left behind by the proposed withdrawal of American troops.
The IS group remains a “potent force of battle-hardened and welldisciplined fighters that could likely resurge in Syria”, said a report shared by the inspector general of the US defence department, an internal watchdog, earlier this week.
The US president was also at odds with his own party leaders who passed a legislative measure on the same day, conveying the message that terrorist groups continue to pose a threat in both Syria and Afghanistan.
Trump is holding his line, though. “Over the past two years, we have retaken more than 20,000 square miles of land. We have secured one battlefield. And we’ve had victory after victory after victory, and retaken both Mosul (Iraq) and Raqqa (Syria),” he said, adding that “more than 60 high-value ISIS leaders … almost every one of them” have been eliminated, along with “more than 100 top ISIS officials” and “tens of thousands of fighters”.
It is learnt that the IS group currently holds just a few villages in the Euphrates valley.