Some 700 American troops retreated from the largest US military base in the region over the weekend under orders from President Donald Trump. One US Special Forces soldier made an apparent show of solidarity for Kurdish fighters by wearing a bright green patch bearing the letters YPJ - a symbol of the Syrian Kurdish Women's Protection Units. He initially directed 2,000 American troops to leave the war-torn country in December, but later backtracked and approved a more gradual withdrawal. His comments were the first to specifically lay out where American troops will go as they leave Syria and what the counter-ISIS fight could look like. The US currently has more than 5,000 American forces in Iraq, under an agreement between the two countries.

Source: Daily Mail October 21, 2019 00:53 UTC