ISIL Now in 'Defensive Crouch' in Iraq, Syria

“In addition to chipping away at their so-called caliphate and killing their leaders,” he said, “we're also hitting them in the pocketbook.”

The operational objective is to put pressure across the entire breadth and depth of the battlefield, to pressure the enemy wherever he is, Warren said.

Syrian Democratic Forces

Over the past 10 days in the Tishreen area northeast of Aleppo, Warren said Syrian Democratic Forces have killed about 140 extremists while liberating dozens of villages and reclaiming more than 310 square kilometers of terrain.

“Soldiers of the Shams al-Shamal battalion, a prominent Arab fighting group in the SDF, are holding the west side of that dam, demonstrating the continued integration between Arabs and Kurds within the Syrian Democratic Forces,” the colonel said.

The SDF consists of groups of Syrian Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, and other ethnic groups in northern Syria, all of whom are collectively determined to defeat ISIL, Warren added.

“As the Shams al-Shamal battalion holds the [Tishreen] dam, other forces are advancing to the south in the vicinity of Ein Isa. These troops have experienced some counterattacks west of Tishreen,” he noted.

To the north, the SDF are receiving harassing mortar fire, but in each case they have repelled all of ISIL’s attempts to regain territory or strongholds, Warren said.

“We're seeing reports of ISIL fighters shaving their beards and trying to hide among the civilian population,” he added, “as they continue to lose ground in Syria and run back to Raqqa, Manbej or Jarablus.”