Asharq Al-Awsat

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis confirmed on Thursday that French forces had deployed in Syria two weeks ago.

The special operations forces were sent to the war-torn country to help boost US-led efforts to combat the ISIS terrorist group, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington.

On whether the US was planning on pulling out of Syria, he responded that right now, “we are not withdrawing.”

Trump had announced that the troops would be pulled out “very soon.”

"You'll see a reenergized effort ... You'll see increased operations on the Iraqi side of the border, and the French just reinforced us in Syria with special forces here in the last two weeks. This is an ongoing fight right now," Mattis continued.

Trump on Tuesday appeared to walk back his vow to yank US troops from Syria, saying the United States wanted to "leave a strong and lasting footprint" in the country. Currently, about 2,000 US troops are in Syria, most of them commandos.

France is a longstanding member of the international coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria and helped bombard the extremists in the Mosul area during the Iraqi operation to recapture the city.

France, along with the US and Britain, also took part in the April 14 cruise missile strikes against Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons-related facilities.

US airstrikes, troops and US-backed Syrian factions have dealt heavy blows to ISIS in Syria but the group still holds some areas and is widely expected to revert to guerrilla tactics if the last remnants of its once self-styled “caliphate” are captured.

US officials have said that in recent days they have seen fighters from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of factions in northern and eastern Syria dominated by the Kurdish YPG, returning to the middle Euphrates River Valley to fight against ISIS.