The raid marked the first publicly acknowledged instance of direct ground combat by USA forces in Iraq since the official end of United States combat operations in 2011.
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He said that this airstrike helped the Syrian military that have for more than a year been surrounded in the Deir ez-Zor area to launch an offensive and reconquer the stronghold from the militants.
“He said they have not done anything right now”, Dunford said.
Iraq’s ruling alliance and powerful Shia militias have urged Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi to request Russian air strikes on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who control large parts of the country, members of the coalition and militias said. Dunford met there with Iraqi and coalition officials.
“I said it would make it very hard for us to be able to provide the kind of support that you need if the Russians were here conducting operations as well”, Dunford told reporters traveling with him in Iraq.
Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that the Iraqis had promised they would not request any Russian airstrikes or support for the fight against ISIS. Salih said authorities in the regional government in Iraqi Kurdistan have recently arrested 15 people, including military officials and businessmen, on suspicion of doing business with IS. He said USA officials spoke with Iraqi leaders and were told no Russian strikes have been requested.
Davis said they believed incorrectly that none of the charity’s personnel were present.
And he said he is asking his top advisers and commanders to come up with recommendations on how the U.S.-led coalition can motivate the Iraqi forces, seize the opportunities presented by the recent successes in Beiji and Ramadi, and pick up the pace of operations.
Overall, the extremists are making about $40-$50 million a month from oil sales, Iraqi officials said.
Mosul and Ramadi, the capitol of Iraq’s western province of Anbar, are both under IS control, and efforts to retake them have been problem-plagued.
Dunford’s visit comes just a few months after Defense Secretary Ash Carter made a trip to Irbil, also meeting with Kurdish leaders.
Together they will create a move that will allow the security forces and Peshmerga, the Kurdish government force, as well as the Sunni tribes and the mobilization troops to collaborate. But Ali Hama Salih, a member of the Iraqi Kurdish parliament who follows trade out of IS-run areas, denied the group was smuggling oil into Iraqi Kurdish areas, saying “there are no documents to prove Daesh is selling oil through here”, using an Arabic acronym for the group.
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So far, the USA has not provided arms directly to the Kurds, insisting instead that it work through the country’s central government in Baghdad in order to avoid fomenting more division. Much of the country’s armed forces had to be rebuilt after a crushing defeat at the hands of the Islamic State previous year.
