Marines at Fire Base Bell provided artillery support Thursday for Iraqi forces launching an attack to retake the Islamic State-controlled city of Mosul, the Pentagon confirmed.
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He said the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL was providing air support. The official was not authorized to discuss the operation publicly and requested anonymity.
A member of the unit, Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin of Temecula, California, was killed by rocket fire Saturday. But senior USA military officials have said recently the Iraqi military doesn’t have the strength to invade Mosul right now.
“This is the first time that we’ve established a spot that’s only American”, Col. Steve Warren, a coalition spokesman, told reporters from Baghdad. Many have been tasked with training Iraqi soldiers, but others, such as the new contingent of Marines, are engaged either in active battles or in leading special operations to rescue hostages.
“Their primary mission is to protect, obviously, Americans”, Warren said, referring to the USA advisers at an Iraqi base near Makhmour.
The photos were released late Wednesday as the Iraqi government announced that its battle to take back Mosul from the Islamic State has begun.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said that in Mosul, among other places, the extremists had executed Christians “solely due to their faith”. Those options are still under discussion in the Pentagon and have not yet officially been submitted to the White House for approval. That’s a sensitive issue for the Obama administration and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, both of whom have expressed a desire to not expand USA operations in Iraq any more than required. For example, troops sent to Iraq for temporary, short-term assignments are exempt.
The Iraqi military announced Thursday that its forces have opened an offensive against IS and had already pushed the militants out of several villages on the outskirts of Makhmour, east of Mosul.
It was not immediately clear how long such a complex and taxing offensive would take.
Any decisions the president makes will be done in the broader context of what needs to happen to maintain momentum against ISIL, “and what specifically do we need to do to enable operations in Mosul”, the chairman said.
Dunford cited the deployment into Iraq of about 200 Marines from an artillery battery of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge as an example of the type of support the Iraqi Security Forces will need to retake Mosul in northwestern Iraq.
Iraqi armed forces began their offensive to recapture the country’s second-largest city from Daesh terrorists earlier on Thursday.
“The advance has allowed us to liberate four or five villages from the Daesh terrorists”, he added, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
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Most analysts think the additional forces will be deployed to help the Iraqi military in its upcoming campaign to liberate the major city of Mosul from ISIS control. The Marines are providing fire support to Iraqi forces isolating ISIL forces in Mosul, Dunford said.
