US to withdraw 1,000 troops from Syria in coming months

The United States will roughly halve the number of troops it has deployed in Syria to less than 1,000 in the coming months, the Pentagon said Friday.

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Washington has had troops in Syria for years as part of international efforts against the Islamic State (IS) group, which rose out of the chaos of the country’s civil war to seize swaths of territory there and in neighbouring Iraq over a decade ago.

The brutal jihadists have since suffered major defeats in both countries, but still remain a threat.

“Today the secretary of defence directed the consolidation of US forces in Syria... to select locations,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, without specifying the sites where this would take place.

“This deliberate and conditions-based process will bring the US footprint in Syria down to less than 1,000 US forces in the coming months,” he said.