White House Says 100 IS Officials Killed, 1,000 Foreign Fighters Held In Syria Since 2017

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th March, 2019) The White House published a factsheet on Saturday summing up the victories in the fight against the Islamic State terror group (IS, banned in Russia) over the past two years, which include the killing of a hundred IS officials and the capture of over 1,000 foreign fighters by Kurdish militias in Syria.

"Over the last two years, the United States and our Coalition partners have liberated more than 20,000 square miles of territory previously held by ISIS in Syria... Sixty high-value targets, 100 ISIS officials, and tens of thousands of ISIS fighters have been killed. There are more than 1,000 foreign fighters from more than 40 countries in the custody of the Syrian Democratic Forces," the press release read.

The Kurdish militia in Syria's northeast, the SDF, released a statement on Saturday saying it had recaptured the last pocket of IS insurgency in the eastern village of Baghuz, marking the end of the "caliphate" that emerged in 2014 amid a civil war in Syria.

US President Donald Trump then said that the IS had been "100 percent defeated." The White House said that a small contingent of US Armed Forces will remain in Syria to ensure that IS remnants are destroyed and that it can never rebuild its "caliphate."