Trump's announcement came shortly after The Wall Street Journal reports that cited people familiar with the matter stating that USA officials have started telling partners in northeastern Syria about the plans to immediately pull all American forces out of the area.

"I would not call this withdrawal, I would call this a surrender", Vinograd said.

US President Donald announced in a Twitter statement that the Daesh* terrorist group has been defeated in Syria, adding that this was the only reason for the United States to be in the Middle Eastern country during his presidency.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jamie Jarrard (L), thanks Manbij Military Council commander Muhammed Abu Adeel during a visit to a small outpost near the town of Manbij, northern Syria, Feb. 7, 2018.

The Washington Post's foreign policy editor Jackson Diehl wondered how Trump's national security adviser John Bolton felt about the withdrawal, given his recent statements about the usa staying in Syria as long as any Iranian-backed forces were there, meaning indefinitely.

This is a developing story.

In late March, Trump said USA forces would be leaving Syria "very soon".

The decision to bring home the 2,000 United States service personnel deployed in Syria brings and end to assumptions about a longer-term presence in the devastated country which senior USA officials had called for to help ensure ISIS does not regroup.

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"The Coalition has liberated the ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over", White wrote. Israel will learn of the timetable and manner of withdrawal, he said, and no matter what "we will safeguard the security of Israel and protect ourselves from this arena".

The US has about 2,000 troops in Syria, many of them special forces training local forces to combat ISIS and working with an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, according to Reuters. In addition to the limited ground presence in Syria, the US also has conducted air strikes against the Islamic State since 2014; from December 9 to December 15, for example, the USA -led coalition conducted more than 200 strikes in Syria, according to the Pentagon.

"The United States and our allies stand ready to re-engage at all levels to defend American interests whenever necessary, and we will continue to work together to deny radical Islamist terrorists territory, funding, support, and any means of infiltrating our borders", Sanders said. With U.S. troops gone, Turkey would likely have free reign over the area.

The U.S. first deployed troops to the country in 2015 during the Obama administration as part of a partnership with Kurdish-led ground forces against ISIS. "An American withdrawal will put the Kurds and all those who came to America's aid in destroying ISIS at tremendous risk", he said.

Former President Barack Obama drew the ire of Trump for withdrawing US forces from Iraq before Iraqi forces collapsed at the hands of IS in 2014.

"If we've learned one thing over the years, enduring defeat of a group like this means you can't just defeat their physical space and then leave, " Brett McGurk, the administration's special envoy to for the global coalition to defeat ISIS, said on December 11.

"An American withdrawal at this time would be a big win for ISIS, Iran, (President) Bashar al Assad of Syria, and Russia", Graham said in a statement.