U.S.-Led Coalition: 400 Troops to Leave Syria

The United States-led coalition fighting the so-called Islamic State said on Thursday that more than 400 U.S. Marines will leave Syria after helping defeat militants in the city of Raqqa, Reuters reported.

The Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces captured ISIS’s de facto capital of Raqqa in October after a five-month-long campaign against the militant group.

“With the city liberated and ISIS on the run, the unit has been ordered home. Its replacements have been called off,” the coalition said in a statement.

“We’re drawing down combat forces where it makes sense, but still continuing our efforts to help Syrian and Iraqi partners maintain security,” said Brig. Gen. Jonathan Braga, director of operations for the coalition.

The Pentagon officially says there are 503 U.S. troops in Syria. But its quarterly report, published last month, puts the figure at 1,720. U.S. officials also said last week that the number of U.S. troops in the country was closer to 2,000, according to Reuters.

U.N. Calls for Urgent Medical Evacuations From Eastern Ghouta

The United Nations has called for the urgent medical evacuation of 500 people from the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, one of the last opposition holdouts around the capital, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Not a single person has been evacuated in two months. If (they are not evacuated) many of them will die,” Jan Egeland, adviser to the U.N. special envoy for Syria, told a press conference in Geneva on Thursday.

The official said that nine people in Eastern Ghouta who were previously on U.N. lists for urgent evacuation had already died. He added that the U.N.’s lack of access to the besieged rebel enclave had led to a “catastrophic situation.”

Meanwhile, Amnesty International accused the Syrian government of using cluster bombs in attacks on Eastern Ghouta, the Associated Press reported. The human rights watchdog said that the government’s use of the internationally banned munitions killed at least 10 civilians last month.

“The Syrian government has shown callous disregard to the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people living in Eastern Ghouta,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa. “But this recent escalation in attacks – clearly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure using internationally banned cluster munitions – is horrific.”

U.N. Envoy: Geneva Talks Extended for Two Weeks

The eighth round of peace talks in Geneva – initially expected to run for a couple of days – will be extended for another two weeks, U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters on Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse.

De Mistura said that negotiations, which formally opened this week, could run until December 15.

His announcement came after a day of separate negotiations with the delegations representing the Syrian government and the opposition. Representatives of rival sides sat “just five meters apart” in separate rooms, while de Mistura shuttled between their respective meetings.

“We are having what we would call close proximity parallel meetings,” he told the rival delegations, according to Reuters. Commenting on Thursday’s meetings, he said, “the atmosphere … compared to the past was professional and serious on both sides.”

Previous rounds of talks have seen no direct contact between the rival delegations. The opposition’s chief negotiator said this week that he was anxious for direct dealings with the Syrian government but an unidentified source close to the government told AFP that “Damascus would not agree to sit around a table with rebel negotiators at this stage.”

De Mistura hinted that face-to-face talks could still be a long way off.

“Let’s be frank: direct contact is good, but what is essential is being able to exchange opinions and shuttling as we do … is good enough,” he said.

Recommended Reads:

• Reuters: Hezbollah Emerges a Winner From Mideast Turmoil, Alarming Foes
• Human Rights Watch: Iran’s Child Soldiers in Syria
• The New York Times: Syria Talks in Geneva Overshadowed by Frustration Over Humanitarian Access
• Medecins Sans Frontieres: Syria: Booby-Traps and Landmines – the Conditions Awaiting Raqqa’s Returning Residents
• Al-Monitor: Turkey Squeezed Between American Hammer, Russian Anvil on Syrian Stage