Iraq

President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria amid an opposition offensive that has reached the capital’s suburbs, declaring in a social media post, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”

Trump’s first extensive comments on the dramatic rebel push came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral. He argued that Syrian President Bashar Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.

Opposition fighters are closing in on Syria’s capital in a swiftly developing crisis that has taken much of the world by surprise. Syria's army has abandoned key cities in the west and south with little resistance. Nervous residents in Damascus describe security forces on the streets. The state news agency has been forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad has left the country.

 

 Syrian government forces abandoned the key city of Homs on Saturday after less than a day of fighting, leaving President Bashar al-Assad's 24-year rule dangling by a thread with insurgents also advancing towards the capital Damascus.

Since the rebels' sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defences have crumbled at dizzying speed as rebels seized a string of major cities and reignited a rebellion in places it had long seemed dead.

The United States and Iraq have reached an understanding on plans for the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces from Iraq, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The plan, which has been broadly agreed but requires a final go-ahead from both capitals and an announcement date, would see hundreds of troops leave by September 2025, with the remainder departing by the end of 2026, the sources said.

The United States military and Iraq launched a joint raid targeting suspected Islamic State group militants in the country's western desert that killed at least 15 people and saw seven American troops hurt, officials said Saturday.

For years after dislodging the militants from their self-declared caliphate across Iraq and Syria, U.S. forces have continued fighting the Islamic State group, though the casualties from Friday's raid were higher than others in previous ones.

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance knocked presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s “shameful” exit from the Army National Guard before his deployment to Iraq during a Wednesday press conference.

Veterans who served in the Army National Guard battalion with Walz accused him of abandoning them upon learning of their upcoming deployment to Iraq in 2005, according to a 2018 letter posted to Facebook. Vance said Walz should be ashamed of allegedly “lying” about his military career.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were briefed in the White House Situation Room on Monday after a suspected rocket attack against a military base in Iraq left a number of US personnel injured. 

Biden, 81, said he discussed “developments in the Middle East” with his national security team, according to a post on his X account which did not acknowledge the latest attack on US troops in the region.