US troops to bolster Iraq's fight on ISIL: White House

The new American troops set to be sent to Iraq will be used to bolster the successes the Iraqi military has already achieved in fight against Daesh, says the White House.

“The United States and our coalition partners will be committed to supporting Iraqi forces as they take the fight to ISIL," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.

Earnest made the remarks after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that 560 American troops would be sent to Iraq to help the country fight against Daesh and retake Mosul, the country's second largest city, from the terrorist group.

“We agreed for the United States to bolster Iraqi efforts to isolate and pressure Mosul by deploying 560 additional troops," Carter said at the Baghdad airport after he met the Iraqi premier and defense minister on Monday.

Heading for Mosul

Carter met Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi to discuss a range of issues, including intensification of the fight against the Takfiris in both Iraq and Syria.

He said that the additional American troops will greatly support Iraqi forces in a critical moment of their fight.

“Iraqi security forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southernmost envelopment of Mosul. That’s its strategic role, and that’s its strategic importance,” he noted.

Carter further congratulated the Iraqi forces on “retaking of Qayyarah West airfield” and reaffirmed that “the United States, along with our coalition partners, will continue to do all we can to support Iraq's effort to serve ISIL (Daesh) a lasting defeat."

According to a release from the Pentagon, the new US troops will provide support mostly in the area of “infrastructure and logistical capabilities at the airfield near Qayyarah."

The base "will become a vital springboard for the (Iraqi forces') offensive into Mosul", the Pentagon said.

"We need to move to this place so we (will) be as close to the fighting as we have been in the Euphrates River Valley fights," said Lt. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, the head of American forces in Iraq.

Abadi said on Saturday that Iraqi forces had recaptured the Qayyarah airbase, which is situated about 60 kilometers south of Mosul. The airfield was seized by the ISIL in June 2014.

Located about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of the capital, Mosul fell to Daesh militants after the Takfiri terrorist group mounted an offensive in the Arab country and overran parts of Iraq in north and west.

In early 2003, the US, strongly backed by the UK, invaded Iraq under the pretext that the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons, however, were ever found in Iraq.

Instead, more than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the invasion, and subsequent occupation of the country. The invasion also plunged Iraq into chaos, resulting in years of deadly violence and the rise of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which was a precursor of Daesh.

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