ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 54

Live UpdateFrom the Liveblog of Thursday, December 3, 2015

Kerry: Ground troops key to defeating IS — but not Western ones

3 December 2015, 2:12 pm 0 Edit

John Kerry says air power alone will not be enough to defeat Islamic State, and specifies that the campaign will require local Syrian and Arab ground forces, not Western troops.

He tells a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation event in Serbia that IS can be defeated in “a matter of months” of a ceasefire between Syria’s government and moderate rebels, and urges the world to come together behind a peace strategy recently hashed out by the United States, Russia and other countries.

— AP