U.S. revives fight vs. ISIS in Syria

New counterterror operations in the region come less than two months after President Trump’s order to withdraw many of the nearly 1,000 U.S. troops deployed there.

MANAMA, BAHRAIN — U.S. troops have resumed large-scale counterterrorism missions against the Islamic State group in northern Syria, military officials said, nearly two months after President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw U.S. troops and an ensuing Turkish cross-border offensive.

U.S.-backed operations against Islamic State fighters in the area effectively ground to a halt for weeks. Intelligence analysts warned that ISIS militants were beginning to make a comeback even though their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed during a U.S. raid Oct. 26.

On Friday, U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Syrian Kurdish fighters conducted what the Pentagon said was a large-scale mission to kill and capture Islamic State fighters in Deir el-Zour province.

“Over the next days and weeks, the pace will pick back up against remnants of ISIS,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, the commander of the military’s Central Command, told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain on Saturday.

After many of the 1,000 troops who were in northeastern Syria withdrew in August, several hundred other troops arrived from Iraq and Kuwait under a subsequent order to protect Syria’s eastern oil fields.

McKenzie said he will ultimately have about 500 U.S. forces operating in an area east of the Euphrates River and Deir el-Zour, north to al-Hasakah and into Syria’s far northeast along the border with Iraq.

The operation Friday in Deir el-Zour province killed or wounded “multiple” ISIS fighters, and more than a dozen others were captured, according to a statement from the U.S. military coalition in Baghdad.

‘Over the next days and weeks, the pace will pick back up against remnants of ISIS.’

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie

Commander of U.S. Central Command