The move comes despite President Obama’s repeated promise that he will send no more USA ground troops to fight in Iraq.
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This now brings the official number of US troops in Iraq up to 4,647, but that doesn’t include commandos or service members who remain in the country for less than four months. US President Barack Obama hailed the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq at the end of 2011 as a major achievement of his presidency, but the war against Islamic State has drawn the American military ever deeper back into Iraq.
A medical official confirmed the casualty figures.
Last week, IS killed more than 300 people in two attacks.
Over the weekend, Iraqi government troops retook Qayara base from ISIS, an airfield south of Mosul. If Mosul is retaken by Iraqi forces, that would be a huge blow on ISIS and would deprive them of their largest city in either Iraq or Syria.
“The additional troops will provide a range of support for Iraqi security forces, including infrastructure and logistical capabilities at the airfield near Qayyarah”, the Pentagon said in a statement on Carter’s announcement. Gen. Saad Maan, said the troops were “practicing for a planned military parade for a specific occasion”.
The IS took control of country’s northern city of Mosul and later seized territories in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.
Carter said the general and his staff would bring “that substantial experience and tradecraft that we learned by hard experience in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
A small group of USA forces surveyed the airfield shortly after it was seized by the Iraqis, but US military officials said it was unclear how much time it would take before cargo planes and other aircraft could land there.
The soon-to-be-deployed American troops will be stationed at the Qayyarah West airfield, and will include engineers and logistic experts.
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Information for this article was contributed by Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times; by Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press; and by Dan Lamothe, Loveday Morris and Mustafa Salim of The Washington Post.
