US Defense Chief Visits Iraq to Assess IS Fight

Carter is taking stock Wednesday of progress against the Islamic State, meeting during a visit to Baghdad with USA and Iraqi military leaders amid an Iraqi offensive to recapture an important city from militant control.

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

Turkey appears to have been coordinating the deployment with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), though they too deny providing Turkey with any authorization for a deployment. Iraq Foreign Ministry summoned Ambassador of Turkey to Iraq and demanded that Turkey must immediately take out its forces from the northern regions of the country.

“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.

Carter’s visit is part of a Middle East swing that began in Turkey on Tuesday and also aims to coax more contributions from US allies in the campaign against Islamic State.

The flare-up between Iraq and Turkey has hardened into an unwelcome distraction for the USA, which is working to persuade Turkey to step up its fight against IS while escalating its own military efforts against the extremist group.

Kurdish forces last month retook the town of Sinjar from Islamic State, cutting the main road between Mosul and Raqqa. He added that neither Abadi nor Lieutenant General Sean B. MacFarland, overseeing US operations against Islamic State, believe the helicopters are needed right now to win back Ramadi. But, he said, that doesn’t mean they won’t make a difference “sometime in the future”.

The Turkish Armed Forces said in a statement its soldiers returned fire, and four had been lightly injured when katyusha rockets landed in their camp north of the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul.

“Soldiers of the caliphate were able to launch 200 Grad rockets”, the statement said in reference to the Islamic “caliphate” the jihadist group has declared in parts of Iraq and Syria. “I think we are on the verge of breaking the back of Daesh”, he said, using an Arabic acronym for the terror group. “It’s kind of hard to inflict support on somebody”, he said.

The U.S. still has 12 A-10 close-air support aircraft based at Incirlik, as well as drone aircraft and refueling planes.