U.S. Marines Secretly Set Up Artillery Base North of Raqqa
Deployment to Syria is a significant escalation of the American campaign in the country.
By Joseph TrevithickMarch 8, 2017
In March 2016, the Pentagon confirmed that U.S. Marines had quietly set up an artillery base south of Mosul, Iraq after one of the individuals at the site died in an Islamic State attack. Now, the leathernecks appear to have secretly moved into northern Syria on a similar mission.
Marines and 155mm M777 howitzers from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Group have moved into the country to support Washington-backed rebels who are gearing up to eject the brutal terrorists from their de facto capital Raqqa, according to a report by The Washington Post’s Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe. The revelation comes just days after pictures appeared on social media of American special operations forces moving very publicly into the contested Syrian city of Manbij.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/8193/u-s-marines-secretly-set-up-artillery-base-north-of-raqqa