US Central Command on Wednesday announced that it supported a series of operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria from May 21 to May 27, as US troops remain involved in combat in the two countries.
CENTCOM said that from May 21 to May 22, it supported the US-backed Kurdish-led SDF in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, which resulted in the capture of one ISIS fighter.
In Iraq, CENTCOM said it backed Iraqi forces in the northern part of the country in operations launched from May 21 to May 27 that resulted in the killing of two ISIS militants and the capture of one “ISIS leader.”
The command claimed the operations in Iraq also resulted in the “clearance and destruction of multiple locations, confiscation of small arms weapons and munitions, recovery of material for further exploitation.”
Officially, the US has had 2,500 troops in Iraq for a few years now, but the Pentagon admitted late last year that it was lying about the number and wouldn’t disclose any more details. The US has kept troops in Iraq despite Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani repeatedly saying that Baghdad could handle the ISIS remnants in the country without foreign support.
After a push from al-Sudani for the US to leave, Washington and Baghdad reached a deal last year that would officially end the mission of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition by September 2025. But the deal allows US troops to stay under a “bilateral security partnership,” meaning no US withdrawal has been planned.
In Syria, the US is currently pulling out some troops and handing over bases to the SDF, but it plans to leave some troops in the country that will operate out of at least one base.
The US has embraced Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda leader who took over the country in December 2024 with his rebranded group of jihadists, known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The US has given Sharaa the OK to integrate foreign jihadists into the new Syrian military and is pushing for the new government to fight against ISIS, which shares a similar ideology to HTS.
