And while most of the USA forces in Iraq are in non-combat roles, others have directly battled Daesh, and three American military personnel have been killed by the extremists.
Advertisement
“(They are) coming in to help expand the base at Qayara West airfield into a node that can support the Iraqi security forces as they move forward with the Mosul operation, and it’ll be an operational air base”.
During his fourth visit to Iraq as Secretary of Defense, Carter in Baghdad will meet with Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al Abadi and Defence Minister Khaled al Obeidi.
The latest addition to USA troops in Iraq is contradictory to Obama’s promise just two years ago when he said his government’s efforts to help the Iraqi army retake territory from the Islamic State group would “not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil”.
Carter laid out the USA vision for Qayara for the first time, describing its recapture as a key strategic victory.
Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top USA commander in the fight against the Islamic State group, said they have already received warning orders to deploy and will flow in “relatively soon”.
The new troops will bring the authorized level of US troops in Iraq to about 4,600. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin was killed at the fire base in March in an IS rocket attack.
“The point of seizing that airfield is to be able to establish a logistics and air hub in the immediate vicinity of Mosul”. The extremist group was behind two large-scale attacks last week that killed more than 300 people.
Two years since Islamic State seized wide swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in a lightning offensive, the tide has begun to turn as an array of forces lined up against the jihadists have made inroads into their once sprawling territory. “Added to the President’s Afghanistan announcement last week, the United States will now be deploying thousands more troops than we have budgeted for in the President’s budget request”.
The newly retaken territory still needs to be secured since IS insurgents remain holed up in several towns behind the government’s front line, a military spokesman said.
A senior USA defence official said Qayara air base would be “an important location for our advisers, for our fire support, working closely with the Iraqis and being closer to the fight”.
“We firmly refuse the presence of United States troops in Iraqi territories because the Iraqi people refuse to replace ISIL with the Americans”, the PMF commander said in a statement.
“Its objective is to create a logistics hub there, so there will be US logistics support”.
Advertisement
Carter also reiterated on the flight to Baghdad that US forces would accompany an assault – in an advisory capacity – on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the largest in Iraq under ISIS control.
