The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has reportedly resorted to selling fish and cars in order to finance terror attacks and military forces in Syria and Iraq.
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That marks a drastic decline from about a year ago when between 1,500 and 2,000 foreign fighters were joining ISIS each month, said US Air Force Major-General Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the US-led coalition, during a news briefing on Tuesday.
Testifying alongside Carter, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, affirmed progress has been made.
“Then we proceeded with our operations”.
“The objectives there are to interrupt ISIL command and control, interrupt its ability to move money around, interrupt its ability to tyrannize and control population, interrupt its ability to recruit externally”, Carter told lawmakers at a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, using an acronym for the IS group.
Up to $800m (£550m) in cash held by so-called Islamic State (IS) has been destroyed in air strikes, a USA military official says. This week, the President authorized 250 additional special operation, medical and logistics personnel to enter Syria to build connections with local groups fighting ISIS and work towards taking the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.
Gersten said that after the knock-on-the-roof operation, the US observed the woman leave the building, and that “multiple men literally trampled over her to get out of that building”.
Iraqi forces have begun preparatory operations in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, but the actual assault to retake the city is not expected for months and possibly not until next year.
She was believed to have been killed, along with the “emir of finance”, Gersten said.
A senior defense official said that Carter “misspoke” and meant the U.S. would like to complete “positioning for the envelopment, not/not the completion of envelopment”.
Iraq and Syria represent the most unsafe portions of ISIL, Carter noted, but the terror group has spread to other areas and the USA military is addressing it in those areas as well.
But as the number of USA forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria grows, and American casualties begin to trickle in, it remains to be seen how long the White House can sustain its argument.
Looking to ensure they and any other non-combatants were clear of the building, the military turned to a tactic used by the Israeli Defense Forces in some of its operations against Hamas militants, Gersten said.
It was unclear why Gersten used a figure of 200.
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Carter and Dunford said that the USA military mission in Syria as directed by President Barack Obama isn’t oriented towards Assad, it is toward ISIS. North Korea is the one spot on Earth where the United States could find itself in a ground war tonight, he said. He did not say if they were ISIS jihadists.
