US officials have in the past expressed frustration at how long it has taken Iraqi security forces to take back the city, but MacFarland said that the Iraqis had made significant progress in dislodging Islamic State.
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On December 4, Ankara deployed about 150 troops and 25 tanks to a base in Iraq’s Nineveh province, Baghdad regards the deployment as illegal.
“The position of the government of Iraq is still the same: Turkey must pull out this force to the worldwide borders and not reorganize its deployment”, Saad al-Hadithi told Reuters.
The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) said in a statement its soldiers returned fire, and four had been lightly injured when katyusha rockets landed in their camp north of the ISIL stronghold of Mosul.
“We were talking about the opportunities that will arise in the future to increase the American contribution to Iraqi success here”, Carter told reporters.
Iraqi troops, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, pushed into Ramadi earlier this week, have surrounded the city and have been preparing to try to take the city back.
However, two members of the Iraqi volunteer forces training at the camp were killed during the attack, a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said.
But details of the plan have not been disclosed, and USA officials haven’t said when they may deploy to Iraq.
But the Iraqi government demanded the “complete withdrawal” of Turkish forces from its territory, indicating Ankara’s partial pullout was not enough.
Two Iraqi volunteers, one of them an officer, were killed in the attack on the Bashiqa camp, where Iraqi anti-jihadist fighters are being trained with Turkish help.
The Pentagon has also acknowledged that some of those troops have already conducted combat operations, such as the hostage rescue raid in northern Iraq in late October. “And that means thinking of all the ways that we can find capable, motivated partners on the ground, enable them, strike from the air, work with them and eliminate ISIL from Raqqa, eliminate ISIL from western Iraq and give the people … back their territory”.
Some troops and vehicles were withdrawn from the Turkish military camp, which hosts some 100 troops, in northern Iraq on Monday following the protests. But Abadi has resisted, arguing foreign forces aren’t needed to fight IS in Iraq. He says Turkey has started withdrawing some of those forces, but adds that it must continue.
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The attack comes days after Turkey was forced to remove reinforcements it had sent to the camp by Baghdad, reported ABC News. “Everything we do, and the coalition does, in Iraq is subject to the principal of Iraqi sovereignty and therefore his permission”.
