WASHINGTON
The White House will stick to its strategy to defeat Daesh despite Ramadi falling to the militants, a U.S. spokesman said Thursday.
"What this administration will continue to do is to implement the strategy that the president has laid out, which is to build up the capacity of local fighters on the ground in the Iraq and in Syria to take the fight against ISIL in their own country,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Earnest drew a comparison between Ramadi and Kobani in Syria – where Kurdish fighters who were supported by US-led coalition air strikes gained control of the city after 112 days of fighting with the militants. "Because of the successful implementation of the strategy that the president laid out, ISIL was driven out of Kobani in a matter of days," he said.
The State Department echoed a similar tone.
"We've been very focused on helping the Iraqis push ISIL out of Iraq. We've been now training and equipping Syrian opposition forces to get better at fighting inside Syria. That's going to take a little more time here," said spokeswoman Marie Harf.
President Barack Obama also got into the act telling The Atlantic magazine that Ramadi's fall was a "tactical setback" but he acknowledged the need for more training and a stronger commitment in Sunni areas.
The Obama administration's assertion that its Daesh strategy is successful was tempered by data released Thursday by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that claims Daesh has seized more than 50 percent of the country and is currently in 10 of 14 provinces with control of the majority of gas and oil fields in Syria.
Daesh has also captured the ancient city of Palmyra, designated as a World Heritage Site by the UN cultural agency, UNESCO.
“We certainly don't deny that ISIL holds significant territory in Syria, but we don't agree with those calculations," Harf said, adding that the group controls less territory that it previously held.
Separately, Central Command confirmed that Nov. 5-6, 2014 airstrikes targeting a network of senior al-Qaeda members known as the Khorasan Group in the northwestern Syrian city of Harim likely resulted in the deaths of two non-combatant children, and minor injuries to two non-combatant adults.
"We regret the unintentional loss of lives," anti-Daesh coalition commander Lt. Gen. James Terry said in a statement.
