Hagel, speaking to troops in California, said the soldiers had arrived in the area around Iraqi Kurdistan's capital, Arbil, earlier in the day on Tuesday.
A US defense official, in a statement issued as Hagel was speaking, said the soldiers sent to northern Iraq would "assess the scope of the humanitarian mission and develop additional humanitarian assistance options beyond the current airdrop effort in support of displaced Iraqi civilians trapped on Sinjar Mountain by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant."
[jpost.com]
13/8/14
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The United States has sent 130 military advisers to the Kurdish semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Wednesday.....
ReplyDeleteThe "assessment team members" have already arrived to the area of intense hostilities near the Kurdish capital of Abril to "give more indepth assessment of where we can continue to help," the US top military commander said.
Hagel hurried to dispel possible suspicions of a ground operation, saying this “is not a combat boots for the ground kind of operation.”
Previous reports said the US on-the-ground presence included 250 military advisers, with 90 people gauging the threat coming from the Islamic State (IS) militant group and the rest 160 helping Kurds to boost their defenses against the IS.
The United States has been providing humanitarian aid to Yazidi Kurds in northern Iraq fleeing from Islamic State militants' onslaught. The US Air Force has also been bombing IS targets and helping to ship weapons to Iraqi Kurds battling the extremists.................Read more: http://indian.ruvr.ru/news/2014_08_13/US-Iraqi-Kurdistan-Pentagon/
France to deliver arms to Iraqi Kurds...
ReplyDeleteFrance will supply arms to Iraq's Kurds "in the coming hours", French President Francois Hollande has announced.
France has received approval from authorities in Baghdad for the decision, French media reports say.
Kurdish forces are fighting militants from the Islamic State (IS) group. Thousands of members of the Yazidi sect have fled the IS advance.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron says an international plan is being drawn up to rescue the stranded Yazidis.
He says the UK will play a role in the mission, the details of which "are now being put in place".............http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28770519
U.S. jets strike near ISIS-held Mosul dam...
ReplyDeleteU.S. warplanes carried out on Saturday airstrikes in northern Iraq near the Mosul dam which was seized earlier this month by Sunni fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), CNN reported citing the Kurdish news agency Rudaw.
The joint military operation between the U.S. and Iraq, which aims at retaking control of the country’s largest hydroelectric dam, began with U.S. fighter jets carrying out strikes on the seized area.
The mission, which was planned in advance, will carry on with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces joining the mission on the ground...................http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/08/16/U-S-warplanes-strike-rebel-held-area-in-Iraq-.html
16/8/14