The United States is prepared to supply the Iraqi army with attack helicopters and advisors to help it retake the city of Ramadi from the Islamic State group, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Wednesday.
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Mr Dawood said that, over the past month, security forces in the district had sustained 365 casualties, both dead and injured. Carter said the attack served as a “painful reminder of the dangers our troops face everyday in Afghanistan”.
“We are pushing the terrorists more to the corners and our troops are further closing on them”, said Sabah al-Numani, spokesman for the Iraqi counter-terrorism forces, which are deployed on the western part of Ramadi.
Pentagon chief offers more U.S. firepower to help Iraq fight Islamic State
On Wednesday, Islamic State militants launched an attack on Camp Bashiqa, killing seven Kurds and injuring some Turkish troops. The United States is eager to do more to do more to accelerate the war against ISIS in Iraq, Carter told Obeidi.
Carter countered Wednesday that the Pentagon would offer more support in Ramadi, including attack helicopters and US advisers to accompany ground troops, if required and requested by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
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One of the main tasks for Iraqi forces is to clear the area of bombs planted by Daesh, a favored tactic of the militants that means they can kill security personnel and civilians long after they have withdrawn from an area.
Speaking in Baghdad, the top USA official in the worldwide anti-IS coalition, Brett McGurk, said the presence of civilians in Ramadi will require a cautious approach as the operation moves forward.
The city fell to Islamic State fighters in the middle of the year during what was termed the Fall of Ramadi. “I, too, wish that particularly the Sunni Arab nations of the [Persian Gulf] would do more”, Carter said.
He called for broader global participation in the fight against Islamic State, which analysts fear appears to be turning its sights on the West from its bases in Iraq and Syria. “We have not discussed as much the necessity of going after ISIL elsewhere”.
Since the outset of U.S.-led coalition campaign against the IS, now in control of wide swaths of territories both in Syria and Iraq, the Obama administration had been sticking to its original strategy of training local forces to conduct ground assaults against the group, together with launching air raids.
Iraqi security forces inspect confiscated weapons that belonged to the Islamic State group fighters in Ramadi, Iraq, on December 10, 2015.
A day ago, U.S.-backed Iraqi forces seized one of the Islamic State’s operations centers on the outskirts of Ramadi, the Iraqi city that has been under the group’s control since spring.
“The intelligence we’re missing is the intelligence you gain on the ground”, he said.
It was the first time that Carter has testified before the committee since IS claimed responsibility for bombing a Russian airliner and attacks in Beirut and Paris and the deadly attack in San Bernardino, California, by a self-radicalized couple.
There also seems to be some doubt about how enthusiastically the Iraqi government has embraced the idea of hosting more US combat troops.
“Daesh are mainly using motorcycles in their movements to avoid air strikes and have deployed suicide attackers in various parts of Ramadi”.
The militants used to provide fuel for neighborhood electricity generators, but they no longer do, leaving residents without power for many hours.
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“Putting large numbers of USA troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria would play directly into the ISIL narrative we are working to defeat – potentially providing our enemies a propaganda victory that could be exploited for recruiting and fundraising purposes”, Reed said.
