Yesterday, visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Washington will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help battle the militant group.
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The Qayyarah airbase, which Abadi announced Saturday had been recaptured, is located 60 kilometers (35 miles) south of Mosul and can serve as a launchpad for future operations to recapture the city.
The United States has pledged US$415 million to help Kurdish peshmerga fighters as they join the fight for Mosul, moving in from the north.
Earnest added the aim is to put Iraqi security forces in a position where they can succeed with a much bigger goal, such as recapturing Mosul, which Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said he would like to do before the end of the year.
Even with the latest deployment announced by Department of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Monday, total United States troop strength in Iraq is unlikely to exceed 6,500, the report explained.
The Islamic State has lost about 12 percent of the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria within the first half of 2016, according to IHS.
The Pentagon said the base would become a vital “springboard” for the Iraqi forces’ push on Mosul.
The developments came on the heels of two large-scale attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that killed more than 300 people last week. Three service members have been killed.
The announcement occurred as Iraqi soldiers appeared to be gaining momentum on the battlefield. Authorities blocked several major roads around Baghdad following the attack.
Iraqi forces were already improving the base’s perimeter in case of a counterattack from the nearby town of Qayara, which Islamic State militants still hold, another US official in Baghdad said.
Carter said the general and his staff would bring “that substantial experience and tradecraft that we learned by hard experience in Iraq and Afghanistan”. The facility had suffered some damage and IS fighters put up only minimal resistance.
“Political order is a good that the just war theory affirms, and our efforts to assist the Iraqi government in bringing increased stability to Iraq is part of our ongoing responsibility that traces all the way back to our original intervention in Iraq”, Dr. Joseph Capizzi, a professor of moral theology and ethics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., told CNA.
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The airfield has two runways, officials said, making it easier to move supplies and personnel.
