US officials weigh more special forces for Syria
‘I.S. LEADER BAGHDADI WILL TASTE JUSTICE’ Mass grave of victims of DAESH found in Palmyra
WASHINGTON, April 2, (Agencies): US officials are weighing sending more special forces troops to Syria, where the contingent of American fighters currently numbers around 50, a senior military official told AFP on Saturday.
A US official speaking on the condition of anonymity said the additional troops would be used to bolster US special forces sent to Syria several months ago.
“Presumably they would do more of what they’re already doing,” said the official, who said the mission would be expected to take on “no new capabilities but an increase of the current capabilities.”
The official said no determination has been made about the number of troops who could be sent or whether they will be sent at all. “Nothing has been decided yet,” the official said. The Pentagon last year said it was sending about 50 special operations troops to work with anti-IS fighters in Syria, although officials have said next to nothing about their whereabouts or progress since, and have worked hard to ensure no information about the commandos’ presence is released, citing security reasons.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said the American forces are directly engaged in pinpointing targets in Syria.
Some were involving in helping identify targets during coalition air strikes in late February to liberate the Syrian town of Shaddadi from IS control.
Washington has led an international coalition against the IS group in Iraq and Syria since August 2014.
The United States, which has ruled out large-scale troop deployments on the ground, has stressed the importance of special operations commandos working with sympathetic local forces and helping to advise and equip them to fight IS.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joe Dunford recently said that the White House and Pentagon had discussed providing troop reinforcements in Iraq, where some 3,900 US forces are currently on the ground.
Russia acknowledged last week that it also has dispatched special forces to Syria, in support of troops fighting to bolster the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Moscow has also been flying a bombing campaign in Syria since September 30, also launching cruise missiles from ships and submarines.
A truce brokered by Moscow and Washington went into effect late February to end hostilities between the Damascus regime and Syrian rebels. The ceasefire did not extend however to fighters with the IS group or the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian offshoot of al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon on Friday warned Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that he will eventually “taste justice” as the US military continues to target the jihadist group’s upper ranks.
“We are hunting him, and we will find him,” military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said.
“Just like we found his mentor, (Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi and killed him. Just like we found the grand master of terrorism, Osama bin Laden, we killed him. We are going to find Baghdadi, and he will taste justice.”
Warren’s prediction comes
after the US-led coalition has targeted several senior IS leaders in Iraq and Syria in recent weeks, including Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli — also known as Haji Imam — who was second-in-command of the extremist group.
“I don’t know if that justice will look like a Hellfire missile, or if it will look like a dark prison cell somewhere, but he will find justice one day,” Warren said of Baghdadi.
The US Justice Department had offered a bounty of up to $7 million for information leading to Qaduli. He had been seen as an eventual successor to Baghdadi, for whom a $10 million reward has been offered.
Warren said Baghdadi spends his time in both Iraq and Syria, where the IS group seized large areas of territory in 2014.
Pentagon chief Ashton Carter last week said the military was “systematically eliminating” the IS group’s leadership.
Omar al-Shishani, the man known as “Omar the Chechen,” who was effectively IS’s defense minister, was also killed last month.
Grave
Elsewhere, Syrian troops have found a mass grave containing the bodies of 42 people executed by Islamic State jihadists in Palmyra, as Washington warned the group’s leader will eventually “taste justice”.
IS has in recent months claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Brussels and Paris, but has lost ground in Syria and Iraq.
Days after Syrian troops backed by Russian forces recaptured Palmyra and its ancient ruins, the army “uncovered a mass grave of officers, soldiers, members of the popular committees (pro-regime militia) and their relatives,” a military source told AFP on Saturday.
Twenty-four of the victims were civilians, including three children, he said, asking not to be named.
“They were executed either by beheading or by shooting.”
The bodies, which were found on Friday, have been transferred to a military hospital in the provincial capital Homs and some have been identified.
In a major symbolic and strategic coup for President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian army on Sunday recaptured Palmyra and its UNESCO World Heritage Site, which IS had overrun in May 2015.
During their nearly 10-month occupation of Palmyra, the jihadists executed at least 280 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britainbased monitor which confirmed the discovery of the mass grave.
Soon after IS stormed Palmyra, it shot dead 25 soldiers in the ancient Roman theatre.
It later released a video of the mass killing in which the executioners appeared to be children or teenagers.
Syria’s five-year war has left at least
270,000 people dead. Few mass graves have been found, however.
Nearly a week on, few of Palmyra’s up to 70,000 residents have returned.
“People fear reprisal by the regime, and also the mines planted all over the city by IS,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
“In addition, many houses were flattened by Russian air strikes before Palmyra was reclaimed,” he added.
About 70 kms (45 miles) to the west, Syrian troops on Saturday pounded the IS-held city of Sukhna, which the army wants to take back in order to consolidate its grip over Palmyra.
“If the regime takes Sukhna, it will use it as a launching pad for an operation against Deir Ezzor province,” in eastern Syria, along the Iraqi border, which is mostly controlled by IS, Abdel Rahman said.
The Syrian army has previously said the takeover of Palmyra would allow it to extend operations against IS in the east and around Raqa, the jihadists’ de facto capital in the north.
A five-week-old ceasefire imposed by the United States and Russia, which back opposing sides in Syria’s war, has seen Damascus focus its firepower on the jihadists, as the truce does not apply to them.
At least 40 mostly foreign IS members, including 18 child soldiers, were killed in raids Thursday on a village in Deir Ezzor province, the Observatory said.
It was one of the single highest tolls that IS has suffered in a single strike since it emerged in Syria in 2013, the monitor said.
IS has lost a string of high-ranking commanders in the past few weeks, mainly to strikes by the US-led coalition which launched a campaign against the jihadists in 2014.
In other news, Turkish armed forces on Saturday launched artillery strikes on positions of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, reports said.
Turkish artillery fired shells from howitzers positioned in its border region of Kilis against IS targets in settlements around the town of Azaz in northern Syria, the Dogan news agency said.
A fragile ceasefire backed by Turkey has taken effect in Syria, but the deal does not apply to territory held by the IS group and Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
This was the the first time there had been reports of Turkey striking IS in Syria since early March.
The report said the artillery strikes were carried out following air raids in the same region by the US-led coalition against IS.
Security in the Turkish border region — which has on occasion been hit by deadly IS shelling from Syria — has been stepped up as a result, it added.
From mid-February, Turkish artillery had also on successive days shelled targets of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) inside Syria, with the military saying it was responding to incoming fire.
But Turkey has not shelled any posi-
tions held by Syrian Kurdish fighters inside Syria since the ceasefire was implemented from February 27.
Washington had urged Ankara to halt its fire on the PYD and its People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia.
The issue of the Syrian Kurds had caused a rare rift between Ankara and Washington, which regards the YPG as the most effective fighting force on the ground against IS and wants Turkey to focus on the fight against jihadists.
Washington has applauded Turkey’s role in the anti-IS coalition but US officials on occasion have urged Ankara to do more.