United States President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the US would be withdrawing forces from Syria "very soon" and "let the other people take care of it" instead.

"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it," Trump said during a speech in Ohio.

There are around 2,000 US troops in Syria, the Pentagon has said.

"We're knocking the hell out of ISIS (Daesh). We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon, very soon, we're coming out. We're going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it--sometimes referred to as land. We're taking it all back--quickly, quickly," Trump said to a cheering crowd.

It's not clear what taking the land back means. The Syrian and Russian governments have consistently called the US military presence in Syria "illegal."

Trump was talking on the topic of infrastructure. "We build a school. They blow it up. We build a school, they blow it up. You know what we have for it? Nothing… I used to say, keep the oil! If we kept the oil, we would have been okay. If we kept the oil, we wouldn't have ISIS! They kept the oil, we didn't keep the oil. Stupid! Stupid!"

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