TV News LIES

On Friday, en route to Florida aboard Air Force One, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced that ISIS' "territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria."

Sanders showed reporters a before-and-after map of Syria, indicating that ISIS no longer controlled any territory.

The commander of U.S.-aligned Syrian forces wants as many as 1,500 U.S. service members to remain in the country to assist with operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Reuters reports that Mazloum Kobani, commander-in-chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told reporters on Monday that he hopes the U.S. will halt plans to fully withdraw from the country, which President Trump announced in December.

“We would like to have air cover, air support and a force on the ground to coordinate with us,” Kobani said at an airbase in Syria, according to Reuters. British and French forces are already in talks to remain in the country, he reportedly added, but stressed that “a partial group of American forces" would ideally remain as well.

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It’s a regular stop for holidaymakers in Israel. American teenagers, some of them boys in sleeveless basketball tops, cluster on hilltop lookouts in the Golan Heights, a volcanic plateau captured from Syria half a century ago. Visitors ride quad bikes along dusty paths or spend the day touring the area’s vineyards. Signs on the roads warn of the risks to tourists: “Caution – cyclists ahead.”

For Syrians on the other side of a fortified perimeter fence, there are more pressing concerns. Thousands have gathered as close to the border as possible, gambling their lives on the assumption that Syrian government forces fighting rebels will not bring the battle too close to Israel.

It is no sure bet. From the Israeli-controlled side, the whistle of an unseen jet could be heard and then a sudden, deeper rumble. In the distance, a grey pillar of smoke punched hundreds of metres into the air as the airstrike hit.

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At least two people have been killed and more than 50 wounded in a bombing at a mosque in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi, according to medical sources.

The casualties were caused by two suspected improvised explosive devices which went off at the Saad Ben Obadah mosque during Friday prayers.

Mutaz al-Mu'tri, Benghazi's security directorate spokesperson, said two bomb bags had been used in the attack, according to Libya's 218 tv news channel.

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The U.S. led coalition fighting Islamic State militants on Friday confirmed that another 50 civilians had been killed in strikes in Iraq and Syria, raising the total number of civilians it has killed to 735 since the conflict began in 2014.

The coalition said in a statement that during August, it had assessed 185 reports of civilian casualties and found that the additional 50 deaths occurred in 14 incidents that it deemed were credible.

The coalition, battling to defeat Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

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Intensified coalition air strikes supporting an assault by US-backed rebel forces on Syria’s Raqqa are causing a "staggering loss of civilian life", United Nations war crimes investigators have said.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias supported by a US-led coalition, began attacking Raqqa a week ago to take it from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).