The United States will increasingly rely on special operations troops to battle Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday, while calling on international powers to beef up their own efforts.
Speaking to lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon chief said he was deploying a "specialized expeditionary targeting force" to Iraq to work alongside local Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces battling the IS group.
The jihadists captured vast areas of territory and several key cities across Iraq and Syria last year, and the United States and its allies have been struggling to defeat them ever since.
The Obama administration -- cautious after the war in Iraq -- initially ruled out "boots-on-the-ground" deployments to fight the IS group, and depended on air power to attack the jihadists, leading a coalition of nations in bombing them since August last year.
But there is growing acknowledgement in the Pentagon that it is impossible to effectively fight the IS group without some US ground presence.
Officials in October announced the deployment of 50 special operations forces to work with anti-IS fighters in Syria and help glean intelligence and identify targets for US and coalition bombers to strike.
Citing security concerns, Carter was evasive when asked how many additional special forces troops would go to Iraq, but said it would be a "larger number" than the 50 in Syria. The United States currently already has about 3,500 troops in Iraq, but their mission is to "train and advise" local forces.
More:
http://report24uk.info/post/386723
