Carter told reporters traveling with him Sunday that the airfield seizure would create a “pincer” effect, placing Mosul between Iraqi security forces advancing from the south and Kurdish peshmerga forces maneuvering from the north. The United States already had established one staging base southeast of Mosul, in Makhmour, in March, but Qayyarah Air Base will provide another foothold, the Pentagon chief said.
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They will assist Iraqi forces planning to encircle and eventually retake the biggest city anywhere that has fallen under IS’ control.
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter on Monday arrived in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on an unannounced visit to meet Iraqi leaders.
Among the authorizations Carter announced in April, when he last visited Iraq, was the agreement to allow American troops to advise and accompany Iraqi forces at the brigade and battalion levels, along with the offensive use of American AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.
Most of the engineers, logistics personnel, security and communications forces will concentrate on building up Qayara air base, about 40 kilometers south of Mosul.
Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city and recapturing it will be critical to efforts to defeat the Islamic State, which captured Mosul and other cities in 2014.
Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, left, is welcomed by Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi at the Ministry of Defense, Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, July 11, 2016.
IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014.
During a meeting later at the Prime Minister’s office, Carter expressed condolences to the Iraqi people on behalf of the USA for the recent terror attacks in Iraq and said they strengthened his determination to fight ISIS.
“While Iraqis mourn, again, analysts say the link between the Fallujah victory and the Baghdad bomb is a microcosm in Iraq of a broader phenomena”, the Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Petersen wrote following the bombing.
The additional troops will provide a range of support for Iraqi Security Forces, including infrastructure and logistical capabilities at the airfield near Qayyarah. This does not include special operations forces operating in support of Iraqi partners or hunting members of terrorist groups, or the combat support forces deployed on “temporary duty”.
“So, there will be U.S. logistics support”.
Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year.
American advisers are working at brigade level with Iraqi special operations forces, but haven’t accompanied them on operations.
Carter also said United States forces will move advisers and other staff to the Qarayyah airbase recaptured from ISIL to help locals organize a push on Mosul. As many as 186 were killed.
Two years since Islamic State seized wide swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in a lightning offensive, the tide has begun to turn as an array of forces lined up against the jihadists have made inroads into their once sprawling territory.
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Coupled with coalition air support, the results have seen the IS group losing roughly half its territory in Iraq and about 20 percent of its Syria claim.
