US to send 200 military personnel to Syria: Ashton Carter

The United States is sending 200 additional military personnel to Syria to help the campaign to drive the so-called Islamic State from Raqqa.


US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the 200, including special forces trainers, advisors and explosive ordnance disposal teams, would join 300 US special force troops already in Syria.

Speaking in Bahrain at the Manama Dialogue conference on Middle East security, Mr Carter said that Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's top foreign military backer, had "only inflamed the civil war and prolonged suffering of the Syrian people."

He added that the first goal of a coalition opposed to the militants was to "destroy the ISIL cancer's parent tumour in Iraq and Syria, because the sooner we crush both the fact and the idea of an Islamic state based on ISIL's barbaric ideology, the safer we'll all be", he said, referring to Islamic State.
 rte.ie
10/12/16
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