Turkish soldiers injured after Islamic State fired mortars at Iraqi training camp

On Wednesday, Islamic State militants launched an attack on Camp Bashiqa, killing seven Kurds and injuring some Turkish troops.

Carter said Washington is willing to do more to support Iraqi security forces as they battle Islamic State and eventually set their sights on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city that has been under the jihadists’ control since June 2014.

He told Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that the deployment “occurred without the prior consent of the Iraqi government”, the White House said.

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

It said Turkish artillery units fired back at ISIL targets in retaliation, but did not provide further details on the Turkish response. None of them were in life-threatening condition, the military said. The U.S. military is now authorized to keep 3,550 American troops inside Iraq to train, advise and assist the Iraqi military fighting ISIS.

The dispute flared up earlier this month after Turkey sent reinforcements to a camp in northern Iraq where Sunni and Kurdish troops are being trained to fight IS militants.

Odom estimated that at least 180 Islamic State fighters were killed in action. They also hope it will demonstrate the ability of up Iraq’s official security forces to succeed without the help of Shiite paramilitary forcesbacked by Iran.

Ramadi, a provincial capital in the fertile Euphrates valley just a short drive west of Baghdad, was Islamic State’s biggest conquest since past year, and reversing it would be a major victory for the Iraqi government and its spectrum of allies, that includes the United States.

Warren said that Iraqi forces faced a strong counterattack from Islamic State militants on Tuesday, and lost ground for a short time. That request had not been made before Mr Carter’s arrival.

“The position of the government of Iraq is still the same: Turkey must pull out this force to the worldwide borders and not reorganize its deployment”, Saad al-Hadithi told Reuters.

“We offer condolences to our Iraqi martyr brothers’ families and the Iraqi people, and wish the injured a speedy recovery”, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

One of the sites attacked Wednesday night was home to several hundred Turkish troops who are conducting their own training missions for the Kurdish forces, officials said.