Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Wednesday that Washington would send more U.S. troops to help local forces in the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State expected later this year.
(Reuters)- “American President Barack Obama was consulted on a request from the Iraqi government for a final increase in the number of trainers and advisers under the umbrella of the international coalition in Iraq,” he said in a statement.
In Washington, a U.S. official confirmed the United States was “prepared to provide additional U.S. military personnel to train and advise the Iraqis as the planning for the Mosul campaign intensifies.” The official did not elaborate.
Abadi met Obama and Vice President Joe Biden last week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, though it was not clear whether the deal was sealed there.
U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, who oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East, told Reuters in July the U.S. military expected to seek additional troops in Iraq.
The United States has at least 4,400 troops in Iraq as part of a U.S.-led coalition providing extensive air support, training and advice to the Iraqi military, which collapsed in 2014 in the face of Islamic State’s lightning advance toward Baghdad.
Iraqi forces, including Kurdish peshmerga forces and mostly Iranian-backed Shi’ite 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 anywhere across their self-proclaimed caliphate, is likely to be the biggest battle yet.