Those outposts, he said, would be behind the front lines, and would be used the way U.S. Marines are operating out of what has been known as Fire Base Bell, outside Makhmour.
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Initially, the Pentagon said that the almost 200 Marines stationed there only provided security for Iraqi forces and USA advisers at the nearby Iraqi base in Makhmour.
U.S. Army Maj. Jon-Paul Depreo, said some of the Iraqi army troops were unfamiliar with the territory which is why they made the decision to call off the campaign.
The movement of US troops within miles of the ISIS’s Iraqi capital would be yet another indication that the American military is increasingly conducting offensive operations even though President Obama has never publicly acknowledged the U.S.is back at war in Iraq.
That would free up his forces to go on the offensive against the insurgents, Jubbouri said in a statement, dismissing what he described as efforts to disparage the army.
“We are working closely with the Iraqi security forces to identify opportunities”, he said, citing specialized training, river crossings with mobile bridges, police training, logistics support and the provision of fire support as examples of that cooperation.
Cardin, 27, was killed during an Islamic State-launched rocket attack in Iraq.
Around the same time, Iraqi counterterrorism forces moved into the town of Hit, west of Ramadi, but found that all homes were rigged with explosives.
A State Department report that was quietly released online last week revealed some startling information about Iraqi views on the US troops redeployed there to shore up efforts to defeat ISIS.
Pentagon officials have said they are on a temporary, short-term deployment into Iraq.
The array of armed forces ready and eager to retake the city of Mosul includes the Shia brigades of the Iraqi Security Forces, the Peshmerga army of the Kurdish Regional Government, the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units, and Sunni-tribal fighters from Nineweh itself. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died in sectarian fighting that worsened after the USA invasion of 2003.
Washington has led an worldwide coalition staging airstrikes against the I.S. group in Syria and Iraq since September 2014, parallel to operations by the Syrian government and its ally Russian Federation.
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“The plan to liberate Raqqa is not as developed as the plan to liberate Mosul”, coalition spokesman Col. Steve Warren said during a video news conference broadcast from Baghdad.
