Iraq repels ISIL attack on US training base

BAGHDAD // Iraqi soldiers backed by US-led coalition aircraft repelled an attack on Friday by ISIL on a base where hundreds of US troops are training local security forces, officials said.

“The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) supported by Coalition surveillance assets defeated the attack [on the Al Asad airbase in western Iraq], killing all eight attackers,” a US military statement said.

About 300 members of the US security forces are at the base in the heart of Anbar province training Iraqi troops.

An Iraqi army colonel and a defence ministry official said the botched attack involved at least seven would-be suicide bombers using a military vehicle.

It came hours after ISIL fighters launched an offensive on the nearby town of Al Baghdadi, one of the few in the Sunni province still under government control.

“IS gunmen launched an attack yesterday (Thursday) afternoon, targeting the police headquarters of Al Baghdadi and two government buildings in the town centre,” a police lieutenant colonel said, referring to the group by its self-declared acronym.

He said the attackers were assisted by “sleeper cells” that were already inside the town, one of a handful in the western Sunni province of Anbar not under ISIL control.

An army colonel said police, army and tribal forces had succeeded in repulsing the militants from most neighbourhoods of Al Baghdadi on Friday.

However ISIL fighters still controlled some buildings and positions in the centre of the town, which lies on the Euphrates river, north-west of Baghdad, they said.

A separate Pentagon statement said a total of five air strikes were carried out near Al Asad since Thursday morning by coalition aircraft.

A suicide car bomb, four ISIL “tactical units”, a checkpoint and an earth mover were destroyed in the strikes, it said without elaborating.

Meanwhile, the UN’s special envoy for Syria said yesterday that president Bashar Al Assad remains part of the equation for ending the nearly four-year conflict in Iraq’s neighbour.

After meeting with Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz, the UN’s Staffan de Mistura said he met with Mr Al Assad recently and “will continue having very important discussions with him because he is also part of the solution”

Mr Mistura said that only ISIL benefited from the Syrian war.

* Associated Press and Reuters