The US would pull out its troops from Syria slowly over a period of time and will protect its Kurdish allies, President Donald Trump has said, summing up the situation in the war-torn country as “sand and death”.

President Trump did not give a timetable for the planned military exit from Syria. Last month, he surprised the world by announcing that he was pulling back American troops from Syria, resulting in the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis in protest.

“I never said I’m getting out tomorrow. I said we are pulling our soldiers out and they will be pulled back and Syria and we are getting out of Syria. Yes, absolutely. But we are getting out very powerfully,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday.

“I don’t know somebody said four months but I didn’t say that either. I’m getting out, we are getting out of Syria,” he said when asked about the timetable for the exit.

“Syria was lost long ago, it was lost long ago. And besides that we’re talking about sand and death, that’s what we’re talking about. We are not talking about vast wealth. We are talking about sand and death,” he said.

“We don’t want Syria, Obama gave up Syria years ago when he didn’t violate the red line. I did when I shot 59 missiles in but that was a long time later and when President Obama decided not to violate his statement that never crossed the red line and then they did and he didn’t do anything about it,” he said.

“Now the Kurds it’s very interesting Turkey doesn’t like them, other people do. I didn’t like the fact that they are selling the small oil that they do have to Iran and we asked them not to sell it to Iran but the Kurds, our partners, are selling oil to Iran. We are not thrilled about that, I’m not happy about it at all,” he said.

“At the same time, they fight better when we fight with them. You know when we send 30 F-18’s in front of them they fight much better than they do when we don’t and you’ve seen what’s happened. But we want to protect the Kurds nevertheless we want to protect the Kurds but I don’t want to be in Syria forever. It’s sand and it’s death,” the US president said.