Republican senator calls for 'boots on the ground' to combat ISIL
US Republican Senator John McCain has called for the deployment of ground forces to fight against the ISIL terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.
The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, touring the Middle East region along with a Senate delegation, made the remarks on Monday during a talk with reporters in al-Quds (Jerusalem).
"For months we've been bombing (Syrian border town) Kobane and we still haven't driven ISIS out," McCain said, using another acronym for the terrorist group.
"Since the air campaign started... ISIS has increased their size and areas of control,” he added.
"The reality is, we need more boots on the ground... we need intelligence, we need special forces, and we can't treat Iraq and Syria as different battlegrounds because it's the same enemy," he stated.
ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, began their offensive on Kobane in mid-September and came close to capturing the town. But Kurdish fighters have gradually taken the lost territory back.
The Republican senator from Arizona was leading a delegation of American lawmakers on trips to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The US military says it planning to deploy about 1,000 troops to train the so-called moderate militants in Syria to combat ISIL terrorists.
The Pentagon announced last week that the training is expected to begin in the "early spring" and will take place in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
ISIL, which controls large parts of Syria's northern territory, sent its fighters into Iraq in June, quickly seizing large parts of Iraq.
Since late September, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.
US warplanes have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq since early August. Some Western states have also participated in some of the strikes in Iraq.
The US-led coalition has done little to stop the ISIL's advances in parts of Syria and in western Iraq.
Some analysts have criticized the US-led aerial military campaigns in Iraq and Syria, saying the strikes are meant to destroy the Arab countries’ infrastructures.
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