About 2,000 US servicemen are currently deployed to Syria, up from the previously reported number of 900, Pentagon Spokesman Patrick Ryder told reporters.
"We have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 US troops deployed to Syria," he said. "I learned today that, in fact, there are approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria."
"These forces, which augment the defeat-ISIS (Islamic State, banned in Russia) mission, were there before the fall of the Assad regime," he went on to say.
Ryder did not specify the type of troops that arrived in Syria to fight the Islamic State, describing them as "temporary rotational forces that deploy to meet shifting mission requirements, whereas the core 900 deployers are on longer-term deployments."
On November 27, Syria’s armed opposition launched a large-scale offensive against government forces in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. By the evening of December 7, President Bashar Assad’s opponents had seized several major cities, including Aleppo, Hama, Daraa, and Homs. On December 8, they entered Damascus, forcing the army to withdraw from the capital. Assad resigned and left the country. On December 10, Mohammed al-Bashir, who had led the so-called Syrian Salvation Government in the Idlib Province since January 2024, announced his appointment as head of Syria’s interim government until March 1, 2025.
