US to send more troops to Iraq ahead of Mosul battle

Albuquerque, September 29

The US will send around 600 new troops to Iraq to assist local forces in the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State that is expected later this year, US and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday.

The new deployment is the third such boost in US troop levels in Iraq since April, underscoring the difficulties President Barack Obama has had in extracting the US military from the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement that his government asked for more US military trainers and advisers. Obama called it a "somber decision." "I've always been very mindful that when I send any of our outstanding men and women in uniform into a war theater, they're taking a risk that they might not come back," Obama said during a town hall event at a military base in Fort Lee, Virginia, televised on CNN.

The new troops will train and advise Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga forces, primarily in the Mosul fight, but also serve "to protect and expand Iraqi security forces' gains elsewhere in Iraq," US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said.

Some of the 615 new service members will be based at Qayara air base, about 60 km from Mosul, Carter said. Iraqi forces recaptured the base from Islamic State militants in July and have been building it into a logistics hub to support their offensive into the northern city.

Other US troops will go to Ain al Asad air base in western Iraq, where hundreds of US personnel have been training Iraqi army forces.

Mosul is Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the troops would be deployed to Iraq in the coming weeks.

Iraqi forces, including Kurdish peshmerga forces and mostly Iranian-backed Shia militias, have retaken around half of that territory over the past two years, but Mosul, the largest city under the ultra-hardline group's control, is likely to be the biggest battle yet. — Reuters