First US soldiers arrive in Syria (Kurdish source)

U.S. soldiers are in Kobani, the town in northern Syria nearly destroyed in fierce fighting with ISIS, to train Kurdish forces to battle the extremists, Kurdish sources said Thursday.

Mustapha Abdi, an activist in the town on the Turkish border, told AFP the American instructors had arrived "in recent hours" in what is the first official deployment of U.S. ground troops in Syria.

A source with the Kurdish People's Protection Units said the Americans would help plan offensives on two Syrian cities held by ISIS -- Jarablus and the extremists' Syrian "capital", Raqqa.

At the same time, they would have a role in coordinating with the Kurds and their Arab and Syriac Christian allies on the ground airstrikes on ISIS by the U.S.-led coalition, the YPG source said.

Abdi said that the troops who had arrived were a "first group of instructors" who would train the Kurds.

There was no immediate information on how many of them had arrived or to what branch, or branches, of the military they belong.

The news comes after Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama's special envoy to the coalition, said Sunday that U.S. forces would be arriving on the ground "very soon"...
 AFP
dailystar.com.lb
26/11/15
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