March 28, 2024
US to deploy 615 more troops to Iraq
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO/PENTAGON--The U.S. and Iraq have agreed on a plan that will send about 600 additional American troops to Iraq to help retake Mosul from Islamic State, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters in New Mexico, Carter said the increase was part of the coalition's "accelerating campaign" to "isolate and collapse" Islamic State's control over Mosul and "expand gains by Iraqi Security Forces elsewhere in Iraq."

A senior U.S. defense official put the total number at 615, bringing the number of American troops authorized to fight IS in Iraq at 5,262. The official said the troops would arrive in Iraq in the next few weeks.

Carter said the additional U.S. military personnel will train, advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish peshmerga. They will be deployed to several locations, including Al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province and Quayyarah West, an airfield about 60 km from Mosul that is being built into a "major logistics hub" for the fight to retake Iraq's second-largest city.

Carter said the Iraqis plan to push into the city of Mosul "in the coming weeks."

"We're on schedule," he told reporters.

Targeting intelligence

In additional to logistics, Carter said U.S. forces will intensify intelligence support to put a special focus on IS external plotting, which has been aimed at Baghdad and Western countries.

President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi agreed on the details of the deployment, which Carter said was recommended to the president by him and U.S. Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford.

In a statement Wednesday, the Iraq prime minister said Obama was consulted on a request from the Iraqi government for a "final increase" in the number of trainers and advisers "under the umbrella of the international coalition in Iraq." The Iraqi government has to approve and agree to any significant change in American troop levels.

Carter said the U.S. had long seen this increase as the final number of American troops required "for the envelopment and seizure of Mosul," adding that the U.S. would assess future needs of the sovereign nation of Iraq with Prime Minister Abadi.

"It will continue to be his decision," Carter said.

Tough fight

Islamic State fighters trying to hold on to the terror group’s shrinking, self-declared caliphate have appeared ready to turn their largest stronghold in Iraq into a "fiery inferno" before relinquishing it to Iraqi forces.

“Essentially, they’ve built a hell on Earth around themselves,” a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, Colonel John Dorrian, told Pentagon reporters Friday via video link from Baghdad.

The plans, Dorrian said, appear to include digging trenches around the city, to be filled with oil and set afire as Iraqi forces move in.

Islamic State leaders also have increased restrictions on civilians while their fighters penetrate schools, hospitals and mosques in the city, building elaborate tunnels underground and planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) intended to slow any advance by coalition-backed forces. (Source: VOA News)
Story Date: September 29, 2016
Real-Time Traffic
NBC
AQMD AQI
Habitat for Humanity
United Way of the Inland Valleys
Pink Ribbon Thrift