500 troops to remain in Syria, says US

US troop levels in northern Syria will probably stabilise around 500, a top American military leader said on Sunday, weeks after President Donald Trump had announced a complete withdrawal.

“There will be less than 1,000, for sure,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Probably in the 500ish frame, maybe six.”

Milley, who has commanded troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, told ABC that it was important for US troops to remain in Syria so long as IS has a presence there. “There are still Daesh fighters in the region,” he said. 

“Unless pressure is maintained, unless attention is maintained on that group, there’s a very real possibility there could be a re-emergence of Daesh.”

Asked about the killing Oct.26 of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi by a US special forces unit, Milley said it would have a “significant disruptive effect on the organisation.” He said the US had “a considerable amount of information on his successor,” Abu Ibrahim Al Hashimi Al Quraishi.

“Where opportunities arise,” Milley said, “we’ll go after him.”

Trump has said he wants to wind down US military entanglements abroad where possible, but Milley predicted that American troops, already in Afghanistan for 18 years, would remain there “for several more years.”

He was also asked whether he knew Alexander Vindman, the army lieutenant colonel and White House Ukraine expert who has testified about his concerns over a controversial phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Milley declined to comment “on a witness to an active investigation” -- the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Separately, a car bomb in Syria killed eight people and wounded more than 20 on Sunday in the sector in the north of the country currently under Turkey’s control, Ankara said.

“Eight civilians lost their lives and more than 20 were wounded in an attack by a booby-trapped vehicle,” a defence ministry statement said.

The statement blamed the attack on the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the Kurdish PKK, which has fought an insurgency inside Turkey for the past 35 years.

The attack happened in Suluk, a village about 20km southeast of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, according to Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Agencies