Watch a US-led coalition airstrike wipe out an ISIS training camp near the terror group's capital city
The US-led coalition has provided ongoing air support for the Iraqi offensive against ISIS in Mosul, and as the fight rages for the terror group's last stronghold in that country, the coalition has also launched airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.
On November 19, the US-led coalition destroyed an ISIS training camp near Raqqa, the group's capital and its most important city in Syria, a clip of which you can see below.
In addition to the training camp, six strikes on that day targeted two ISIS tactical units, destroyed seven oil-production machines and one vehicle, and damaged a supply route.
The campaign in Mosul appears to have ISIS on the defensive, even as Iraqi forces and their allies advance slowly in the city's crowded streets. In contrast, efforts to attack Raqqa appear to have bogged down, with Kurdish militias making little progress and US-led strikes in the province mainly targeting the terror group's oil infrastructure.
Farther west, in Aleppo, a focal point in Syria's bloody five-year civil war, the tide appears to have turned decisively for the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, whose forces on Monday seized parts of the city that opposition rebels have held for four years.
Assad's Russian-backed military looks set to take control of all of Aleppo, and some 250,000 civilians who have been besieged in the eastern part of the city have gone without food, fuel, or aid for months.
Aid groups say civilians in the city are facing a "dire situation," but convoys with supplies have been unable to access eastern Aleppo. "In terms of east Aleppo, we just need the green light from the people who control the roads going in because, as you know, the east of Aleppo is besieged," said Ramesh Rajasingham, UN deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis.
After the failure of a US-Russian ceasefire in September, US efforts to affect a diplomatic solution to the war have amounted to little, even with ongoing negotiations in Geneva.
The US has seen its leverage steadily eroded, in part because of Syrian-Russian gains on the ground, and in part because of US President-elect Donald Trump's suggestions he will cooperate with Moscow.
While the US-led coalition continues to strike ISIS fighters and infrastructure in Iraq and Syria, people not affiliated with the terrorist group have been targeted accidentally.
The US government said in early November that 39 civilians had been killed in 13 strikes launched in Iraq since March, while a Pentagon report released on Tuesday admitted that airstrikes mounted by the US, Australia, Denmark, and Britain on September 17 had in fact killed dozens of Syrian armed forces personnel, rather than ISIS fighters.
US Brig. Gen. Richard Coe said the strikes were not illegal, as the mistake was not deliberate or the result of negligence.
You can see the full video of the November 19 strike on the Operation Inherent Resolve Facebook page.