HANOVER, Germany -- President Barack Obama on Monday announced plans to send 250 more troops to Syria, casting his decision as a bid to keep up "momentum" in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own.
The president noted gains made by the 50 special operators already in Syria on missions to advise and assist local forces battling the Islamic State, which holds territory in Syria and Iraq.
"Given the success, I've approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel ... to keep up this momentum," Obama said.
The expanded U.S. military presence in Syria is aimed in part at helping Arab fighters in a network of groups, now dominated by Kurdish fighters, that the United States is backing as it battles the Islamic State. The U.S. forces work with Kurdish militiamen and others as they seek to isolate Raqqa, the Islamic State's capital in Syria.
As Obama gave notice of the move, he also said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden.
Obama discussed the Islamic State fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi.
Obama formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation -- a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continent's history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the "ruins of the Second World War."
"Make no mistake," Obama said. "These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life."
The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies' contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the airstrikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own.
The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as "free riders." He made a passing reference to that complaint Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO.
"I'll be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense," he said.
In the past week, on stops in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and in London, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. He made the pitch again in Hanover.
"These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them," Obama said.
Accelerating the fight
The deployment brings the number of U.S. military personnel in Syria to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operations troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel.
"What we've seen is the small team that we put into Syria several months ago has been very effective in serving as a force multiplier because they are able to provide advice and support to the forces that are fighting against ISIL on the ground in Syria," said Ben Rhodes, U.S. deputy national security adviser, using an acronym for the terror group. "We want to accelerate that progress."
Obama's troop announcement was called "a good step" by Salem Al Meslet, spokesman of the Higher Negotiating Committee, the main Syrian opposition group.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said it was "a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient."
The increase is part of an overall acceleration in the fight against the Islamic State. Despite a string of what the administration has described as successes -- including territory reclaimed from the militants in Iraq and Syria and the severing of supply and communication lines between Islamic State forces in the two countries -- some aspects of the conflict have gone more slowly, or have been less successful, than anticipated.
Although Iraqi military forces, backed by U.S. air power and other enhancements, retook the city of Ramadi early this year, plans to move toward Mosul, in northern Iraq, have dragged as the Baghdad government contends with economic and political difficulties, and the melding of Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish military forces into a unified offensive force has proved problematic.
The plan to move toward Raqqa follows last year's successful northern Syria offensive that was led primarily by Kurdish forces, aided by U.S. airstrikes, with some support from a group of Sunni opposition fighters the United States has been struggling to support. Raqqa, farther to the south, is a Sunni city that Kurdish forces are not eager to move toward and a place where they would not be welcome.
In addition, a partial cease-fire in the fight against Syrian President Bashar Assad has nearly collapsed in recent weeks. Renewed fighting in the northwest region near the Turkish border has complicated administration plans to begin air operations aiding an opposition attempt to stop an Islamic State advance.
The struggling peace process -- and not the additional U.S. troops -- was the main topic of the talks between Obama and his European counterparts on Monday, Merkel said.
"It's clear that everybody needs to engage, but the focus was very strongly on a political solution and the question of how to proceed," Merkel told reporters after the meeting.
In Geneva, the U.N. envoy leading the indirect talks warned that the cease-fire was in trouble but said he would continue the latest round of talks until Wednesday, despite an opposition walkout last week.
Despite the violence, Staffan de Mistura said, there was "modest but real" progress in delivering humanitarian aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas -- one of the main intentions of the cease-fire agreement.
Violence in Syria
The continuing violence in Syria left more than 20 people dead Monday in shellings between government forces and opposition fighters in the country's largest city, while a bomb blast disrupted the relative quiet in a Damascus suburb that is home to one of the country's holiest Shiite shrines.
More than a dozen people were killed in the shelling on Aleppo, pro-government media and activist-run monitoring groups said. Eight died in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed vehicle at a military checkpoint.
In the past week, nearly 150 people have been killed in northern Syria and near Damascus, marking a major escalation that has caused the conflict to take a downward spiral to levels of violence unseen since the Feb. 27 cease-fire, engineered by the U.S. and Russia, took hold. The cease-fire doesn't include the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida branch in Syria, the Nusra Front.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing. The Aamaq news agency, linked to the extremist group, said fighters detonated an explosives-packed vehicle at a gathering of government troops in the suburb of Sayyida Zeinab.
Al-Manar TV, run by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, said eight people were killed in the blast. The Shiite militants have a heavy presence in the suburb. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist-run monitoring group, gave the same toll. Syrian state TV said seven people were killed and 20 wounded.
Meanwhile, violence raged for the fourth straight day in Aleppo. The government news agency said rebel shelling of government-held neighborhoods left 16 people dead. The Observatory put the number at 19, including three children. The group said 120 people were injured.
Government shelling of rebel-held areas in the city left at least three dead, including a 6-year old girl, opposition activists said. The Observatory said four were killed in the government shelling on the al-Jazamati neighborhood.
To the north, Turkey deployed rocket launchers Monday on its border with Syria as it attempts to stop intensified rocket barrages on its frontier by Islamic State militants.
Rockets fired from inside Syria killed two people Sunday in the Turkish border city of Kilis, where refugees from Syria's war outnumber locals, raising to 17 the death toll there from such attacks this year, according to the government.
"We have decided to take additional military measures against threats emanating from Islamic State-held areas in Syria," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said after a Cabinet meeting Monday. "They include increasing military capabilities to detect" threats.
A military convoy of 13 trucks, carrying multiple rocket launchers, was seen headed to the Syrian border, the Anadolu news agency said.
Information for this article was contributed by Kathleen Hennessey, Frank Jordans, Lolita C. Baldor, Albert Aji, Philip Issa and Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press; by Greg Jaffe, Missy Ryan and Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post; and by Justin Sink, Toluse Olorunnipa, Patrick Donahue, Selcan Hacaoglu and Firat Kozok of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 04/26/2016