Baghdad has been targeted in increasingly devastating attacks against civilians in 2016 as the Islamic State is losing the ground war against Iraqi security forces and the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition.
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Carter is expected to meet al-Abadi and minister of defense Khalid al-Obeidi, as well as Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top US military commander for the Islamic State fight.
The United States will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help establish a newly retaken air base as a staging hub for the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul from Islamic State militants, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday on an unannounced visit to the country.
Carter told a gathering of U.S. troops in Baghdad: “With these additional USA forces I’m describing today, we’ll bring unique capability to the campaign and provide critical support to the Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight”. But it could be in the coming weeks and months.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul from IS before the end of the year, though it is unclear when a concerted campaign will begin.
However, there is still debate in Washington about the timing of an offensive on Mosul.
Some US and allied military and intelligence officials warn that, aside from its elite counter terrorism force, the Iraqi military is not ready to take on DAESH militants in Mosul without significant assistance from the Kurdish peshmerga and Shiite militias.
He made the announcement on a surprise visit to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
“The point of seizing that (Qayara) airfield is to be able to establish a logistics and air hub in the immediate vicinity of Mosul”, Carter told reporters.
A small team of USA and coalition troops surveyed the airfield after its capture but did not remain at the base, one of the officials said. It is the biggest city ruled by IS in either Iraq or neighbouring Syria.
A senior US defence official compared the Qayara site to the Taqaddum airbase west of Baghdad, an operations centre closer to the fighting in Anbar province from where American troops have advised Iraqi forces since 2015.
President Barack Obama approved the deployment, which brings the new troop cap will to 4,647. A decade ago around 130,000 USA service members were stationed in the country.
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A massive bombing in Baghdad’s Karrada earlier this month killed more than 292 people, followed days later by an attack on a Shiite shrine in Balad by ISIS men that claimed the lives of 40 people.
