A US-backed Syrian Kurdish coalition says the US has landed infantry behind Islamic State lines to spearhead an assault on the town of Tabqa.
The Syrian Democratic Forces say the US has airlifted several Marines and SDF fighters by helicopter into Islamic State-held territory, capturing four villages, and cutting the main artery running between the extremists’ de facto capital, Raqqa, and the western countryside.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the deployment with US commanders.
The group said in a statement on social media Wednesday that the operation was in preparation for an assault on Tabqa, an IS redoubt 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Raqqa.
The activist-run group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said 500 US and Syrian Kurdish forces were deployed in the operation Wednesday morning. The group relies on local contacts to smuggle information out of IS territory.
— AP
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