The United States will roughly halve the number of its troops in Syria to fewer than 1,000 in the coming months, a U.S. military official said.
“Today, the Secretary of Defense ordered the consolidation of U.S. forces in Syria,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.
“This deliberate and conditional process will reduce the U.S. presence in Syria to fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops in the coming months,” he added.
U.S. Central Command, it said, “will remain prepared to continue striking at the remnants of ISIS in Syria,” Xinhua reported.
More than 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed to Iraq to support Iraqi forces in their fight against Islamic State (IS) militants since 2014. The troops were part of a U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria.
