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UN Security Council to meet on Turkish troops in Iraq
Carter will hear an assessment of the Ramadi operation from Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who heads the US campaign in Iraq and Syria.
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The U.S. still has 12 A-10 close-air support aircraft based at Incirlik, as well as drone aircraft and refueling planes.
“I think we’ve made clear and the president has made clear and I’ve made clear that if opportunities can be found, where USA advise and assist forces can make a difference, we’re prepared to do that”, he told reporters en route to Turkey on Tuesday. The United States has around 3,500 troops in Iraq now. The White House said both leaders were in agreement about the need to cooperate in fighting the Islamic State group and pursuing a resolution to Syria’s civil war.
The gear will be shipped from USA storage facilities in Kuwait and likely will arrive within weeks, a senior defense official said.
The Obama administration has been talking for days about “accelerating” the fight against IS, but that could be complicated by Iraq’s reluctance to a greater USA presence in the country, including tools such as Apache helicopters and more troops.
The US State Department had said earlier that the conflict was a just a “dispute between Turkey and Iraq” over “a small number of troops”.
Carter also met with Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al Obeidi, who told him that after Iraqi troops retake Ramadi from ISIS, they would prepare for “a big battle” to reclaim Mosul and Nineveh province.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Wednesday defended his country’s deployment of additional forces to Iraq last week, saying it was an “act of solidarity” with Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State group.
USA officials view the back-and-forth battle as a test of efforts to bring Iraq’s fractured security forces into a common front against the Sunni extremists.
Nations across the world have been extending support to combat ISIS after the recent terror attacks in Paris.
In Syria, U.S.-backed rebels are hoping to isolate Raqqa, the Islamic State’s defacto capital there. The Pentagon also stepped up deliveries of thousands of antitank missiles, vehicles and other military hardware.
The secretary commended President Masoud Barzani of Iraq’s Kurdistan region on the Kurdish peshmerga troops retaking Sinjar from ISIL control; he said it’s important because it separates the Iraqi-Mosul side of the theater from the Syrian-Raqqah side.
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Odom estimated that at least 180 Islamic State fighters were killed in action.