Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump is leaning toward approving a new Pentagon plan to keep a small contingent of American troops in eastern Syria, perhaps 200 special operations forces, a senior administration official told The New York Times on Sunday. If approved, the plan would walk back Trump's order to the Pentagon earlier this month to withdraw nearly all of the 1,000 US troops from northern Syria . The troops would be kept to combat ISIS and block the advance of Syrian government and Russian forces into the region's oil fields, the official told the Times. Since last week, Trump has been considering a plan that would be for counter-terrorism efforts and would leave a couple of hundred troops in northeast Syria, near the border with Iraq, a senior administration official told the Times. The main goal would be to prevent ISIS from resurging in Syria and Iraq.

Source: CNN October 21, 2019 03:00 UTC