Image copyright Reuters Image caption Kurdish and Sunni Arab fighters launched an operation to seize Raqqa from IS last month

The US is sending 200 more military personnel to help fight the Islamic State group in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, the US defence secretary says.

Speaking at talks on Middle East security, Ash Carter said the troops would include special forces trainers, advisers and bomb disposal teams.

They will join 300 US special forces who are already in Syria.

Last month a US-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters said it had begun an operation to capture Raqqa.

The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) had been gaining ground in areas north of the so-called Islamic State's "capital" in Syria.

Speaking on Saturday at a meeting in Bahrain, Mr Carter said the 200 additional troops would "continue organising, training, equipping, and otherwise enabling capable, motivated, local forces" to take the fight to IS.

Interactive See how the area IS controls has changed since 2015 October 2016 January 2015

A US-led coalition has been fighting IS - mainly through air strikes - in Syria and in neighbouring Iraq.

But the main conflict in Syria pits the government of President Bashar al-Assad - assisted by Russian air power - against rebels backed by Turkey, Gulf states and the US.

One key battleground is Aleppo, once Syria's largest city, where pro-government forces continue their advance in eastern, rebel-held areas.

In a BBC interview broadcast on Saturday, the UN special envoy for Syria warned that a government victory in Aleppo would not end the war.

"A serious discussion about the future political set-up of Syria" is the only way to achieve peace, Staffan de Mistura told BBC Radio 4's Today.

The only way to win peace and stability in Syria, he continued, was a power-sharing agreement.

Syria's army seized 85% of the rebel-held part of the city in recent weeks.

The intensification in fighting has forced tens of thousands to seek refuge in government-controlled territory.

Russian officials say up to 10,500 left during a temporary humanitarian pause on Thursday alone.

Mr Carter added that Russia, Syria's main ally, had "only inflamed the civil war and prolonged suffering".

'Worst conflict since WWII'

Meanwhile, foreign ministers from the US and Europe, as well as officials from Arab countries are discussing the Syrian conflict in Paris.

Saturday's talks were expected to focus on ways to protect civilians, as well as the future of the rebels in eastern Aleppo.

Image copyright AFP Image caption The rebels continued to fight government forces outside Aleppo on Friday

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Many elderly and sick have been trapped for weeks because of the fighting

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attending the talks, sought to lower expectations saying: "I know people are tired of these meetings, I'm tired of these meetings.

"But what am I supposed to do? Go home and have a nice weekend in Massachusetts, while people are dying? Sit there in Washington and do nothing?"

He described the conflict in Aleppo as the worst "since World War Two".

The UN estimates that up to 100,000 people are squeezed into an "ever-shrinking" rebel pocket in eastern Aleppo with little or no access to food or water.

Aleppo was once Syria's commercial and industrial hub before the uprising against President Assad began in 2011.

It has been divided in roughly two since mid-2012. But in the past year, Syrian troops broke the deadlock with the help of Iranian-backed militias and Russian air strikes.</s>Two hundred additional American special operations troops are headed to Syria to help Syrian Kurdish and Arabic forces fighting ISIS, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Saturday at a security conference in Bahrain.

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The troop increase will bring the total number of U.S. troops in Syria to 500.

A defense official said the additional troops will help train, advise and assist the growing number of Syrian rebel forces preparing to retake and hold Raqqa, ISIS' de facto capital city in Syria.

Carter, who made the announcement at the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Manama Dialogue, said the additional forces will help "to continue organizing, training, equipping, and otherwise enabling capable, motivated, local forces to take the fight to ISIL, and also bringing down to bear the full weight of U.S. forces around the theater of operations like the funnel of a giant tornado."

He added, "This latest commitment of additional forces within Syria is another important step in enabling our partners to deal ISIL a lasting defeat."

The additional 200 troops being deployed to Syria will include special operations forces, trainers, advisers, and explosive ordnance disposal teams.

The 300 American special operations forces already in Syria mainly advise and assist the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of 45,000 Syrian Kurdish and Arab rebel forces that have been fighting ISIS. A small number of the American forces have also been advising and assisting Turkish forces fighting ISIS in northwestern Syria.

With support from American airstrikes, as well as advisers on the ground, SDF forces have pushed ISIS out of strongholds in northern and eastern Syria and are now pushing towards Raqqa.

Carter said Saturday that SDF forces have fought their way to 15 miles north of that city.

Plans call for the SDF to envelope Raqqa with Kurdish fighters remaining outside of the city so Arab fighters can retake it from ISIS.

A U.S. defense official said the troop increase "is tied to the growing number of local forces now willing to participate in this fight, and our efforts to enable them."

The SDF has been a mostly Kurdish force with a smaller component of Arab fighters. But as the SDF has grown to 45,000 in number, the number of Arab fighters has also grown to 13,000.

The recruitment of local Arab fighters from the area around Raqqa has helped boost those numbers.

The push towards Raqqa began in early November, coming on the heels of the Iraqi offensive on Mosul in Iraq. Two months into that offensive Iraqi forces have met stiff resistance as they have pushed into the city's eastern limits.

5,262 American troops are authorized to be in Iraq to train, advise and assist Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting ISIS.

Carter restated during his remarks in Bahrain that after ISIS is defeated in Iraq and Syria, American troops will remain in that country to help with its training and advising mission to help Iraqi forces consolidate security over the rest of the country.</s>MANAMA (Reuters) - The United States will send 200 additional military personnel including special forces to the campaign against Islamic State in Syria to create a “tornado” of pressure against the group’s Raqqa hub, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Saturday,

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter attends a meeting with Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo, Japan, December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Kazuhiro Nogi/Pool

Carter, speaking in Bahrain to regional security chiefs, twinned the announcement with a call on Middle East allies to do more for their own defense, a sore topic with some Gulf states who resent being seen by Washington as military “free riders”.

The arrival of the 200 additional forces in Syria, joining 300 special forces already there backing local allies, would bring to bear the “full weight of U.S. forces around the theater of operations like the funnel of a giant tornado”, Carter said.

“The sooner we crush both the fact and the idea of an Islamic state based on ISIL’s barbaric ideology, the safer we’ll all be”, he said at the Manama Dialogue security conference.

Syria’s civil war pits Assad, backed by Iran, Russia and some Shi’ite militias, against mostly Sunni Arab rebels backed by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the United States. A secondary conflict puts all of them at war with Islamic State.

Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria are the pillars of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, and recapturing them would be a pivotal defeat for the ultra-hardline Sunni jihadists.

Carter said that despite the eventual defeat of IS in Syria the violence there would not stop until an end was put to the civil war, and Russia’s intervention to back President Bashar al-Assad had only inflamed the conflict.

Russia entered into the war saying it wanted to promote a smooth political transition and fight IS, Carter said.

“But then it did neither of those things,” he added.

ALLIES “AREN’T DOING ENOUGH”

Syrian army advances in Aleppo mean the government appears closer to victory than at any point since 2011 protests against Assad evolved into an armed rebellion. The war has killed more than 300,000 people and made more than half of Syrians homeless.

In Iraq, Carter said, his main concern that the effort to stabilizes the Mosul region after it was liberated, by rebuilding towns, services and communities, “will lag behind the military campaign”. Gulf countries could help with that.

Carter reiterated a U.S. call for more defense cooperation among Gulf Arab states, a delicate question ever since President Barack Obama last year told The Atlantic magazine some states in the Gulf and Europe were “free-riders” who called for U.S. action without getting involved themselves.

Some Gulf states see Obama, keen to extricate Washington from conflicts across the world, as unappreciative of their willingness to host U.S. bases and purchase U.S. weapons.

“Mutual interest requires mutual commitment,” Carter said. “I would ask you to imagine what U.S. military and defense leaders think when they have to listen to complaints sometimes that we should do more, when it’s plain to see that all too often, the ones complaining aren’t doing enough themselves.”</s>"The United States will deploy approximately 200 additional US forces to Syria," Carter said, adding that the new contingent would include special operations forces, trainers, advisers, and explosive ordinance disposal teams.

"This latest commitment of additional forces within Syria is another important step in enabling our partners to deal ISIL a lasting defeat," Carter said, using the government's preferred acronym for the terror organization.

Carter made the announcement while speaking at the Manama Dialogue, a regional security summit hosted in the capital of the Gulf state of Bahrain.

The decision will nearly double the number of US troops authorized to operate in Syria. President Barack Obama had in April set a cap of 300 for the number of military advisers permitted in Syria, though the actual number of advisers on the ground is thought to be fewer than that.

Forces in Syria have been primarily working with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella organization that includes Kurdish and Arab units. Those fighters have enjoyed some success against ISIS, coming within 15 miles of Raqqa, according to Carter. A senior defense official told CNN that the actual adjustment to the troop cap would be 203 personnel and that their purpose was to boost the assault on Raqqa. The deployment "had been anticipated for some time" the official added, as the final battle looms against the several thousand ISIS fighters believed to be in Raqqa. The new deployment of American personnel could help in the final assault on that city by enabling the training of additional fighters that could be key to ejecting ISIS. US and Turkey agree to long-term plan on Raqqa US and Turkey agree to long-term plan on Raqqa "We're getting into what is predominantly traditionally more Arab territory," so more Arab fighters are needed, the defense official said. "We've always been very conscious of the fact that Raqqa is an Arab city." The official noted that "more and more Arab fighters have wanted to be part of the coalition we have fighting in northeast Syria," but said that this influx has presented challenges in terms of training and equipping these new recruits, thereby requiring the additional US personnel. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the counter-ISIS coalition, told reporters Thursday that, in anticipation of the push on Raqqa, the SDF was boosting its ranks with more than 1,000 new recruits. The United States is also using its air power to lay the ground for the coming battle. Dorrian said coalition aircraft had conducted nearly 300 strikes against ISIS in support of the offensive, with America's Syrian allies capturing more than 270 square miles of territory. Carter drew attention to a counter-ISIS strike on Thursday that involved the destruction of 168 oil tanker trucks. Carter called it "the largest airstrike of this kind to date." But US military officials anticipate a tougher fight in the days ahead. "Daesh considers Raqqa their capital in Syria, so we expect resistance to stiffen as forces move closer to the city," Dorrian told reporters last month, using another name for the terror group. And even after Raqqa and Mosul are captured, Carter predicted that the fight against ISIS would continue for some time. "There will still be much more to do after that to make sure that once defeated, ISIL stays defeated," he said.</s>US is sending 200 more troops to Syria to battle Islamic State

MANAMA, Bahrain — U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says as many as 200 more American troops are being sent to Syria to help Kurdish and Arab fighters capture the Islamic State group's key stronghold of Raqqa.

Carter made the announcement Saturday at a security conference in Manama, Bahrain.

The extra troops will include special operations forces and are in addition to 300 U.S. troops already authorized for the effort to recruit, organize, train and advise local Syrian forces to combat the Islamic State.

Carter said the extra troops will help the local forces in their anticipated push to retake Raqqa, the de facto capital of the extremist group's self-styled caliphate, and to deny sanctuary to the Islamic State after Raqqa is captured.
The United States announces that it will deploy an additional 200 troops to help force the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant from Al-Raqqah.