US Withdraws 12 Fighter Jets From Turkey

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spoke with Iraqi leaders Wednesday about developing a plan to defeat the Islamic State group in the country.

“Everything we do…here is subject to the approval of the sovereign Iraqi government”, Carter said at the start of the meeting.

The alliance does not include Iraq, Syria or Saudi rival Iran.

The attack took place during a multi-pronged IS operation aimed at breaking through Iraqi Kurdish lines in several areas around Mosul, the jihadists’ main hub in Iraq.

Turkey has stationed trainers since previous year at a training camp in Iraq for fighters battling the Islamic State group.

Six F-15e Strike Eagles were deployed to Turkey on November 13 to conduct strikes in Syria and Iraq…

State TV quoted an unnamed military official as saying that troops and pro-government militiamen captured the Nouba mountain in Latakia province early Wednesday. That request had not been made before Carter’s arrival.

“As we’ve begun to impact their ability to make money through things like oil … what we’ve seen is that the fines that they impose on the civilian population … have gone up”, the official said.

Carter was to talk with his commanders, including Lt. Gen. Sean McFarland who is heading the fight against IS, and Iraqis about the new USA plan to deploy a new special commando force to Iraq.

“This is a very complex environment that we’re operating in, and we have to be attentive to some of the political realities that surround us every single day”, MacFarland told reporters on Wednesday.

Ten thousand members of the Iraqi security forces now surround Ramadi. “But the defeat here in Syria and Iraq is necessary and we need to hasten that”. “The conditions, I think, are properly set for the full liberation of Ramadi”.

Iraqi forces have cleared militants from areas of the city but the city center remains under Islamic State control seven months after it was seized. “Our progress in Ramadi is a huge progress…and we are moving up north at the moment”, he said. “It’s kind of hard to inflict support on somebody”.

Carter’s trip had been planned for some time, but on Monday during a Pentagon visit, President Barack Obama vowed to accelerate the campaign against IS, lending more urgency to the visit. The rocket fire was part of a broader offensive by the insurgents on Kurdish positions around the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, according to Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the Kurdish peshmerga forces, and a general.