Jihadists face growing pressure as US mulls strategy

BAGHDAD // Elite Iraqi troops backed by US jets battled militants just south of Baghdad on Wednesday as the US president Barack Obama ruled out the possibility a American forces joining ground operations against the extremist group ISIL.

“The American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission,” Mr Obama told American troops at the headquarters of US Central Command in Florida.

His message came a day after General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US military’s joint chiefs of staff, left the door slightly ajar to the possibility of some ground forces.

The use of foreign troops was also dismissed by the Iraq prime minister, who said he saw no need for other nations to send troops to help fight ISIL, despite plans for a global coalition to root out the extremist group from Iraq and neighbouring Syria, where it also controls swathes of territory.

“Not only is it not necessary, we don’t want them. We won’t allow them. Full stop,” Haider Al Abadi said in an interview with Associated Press.

Iraqi troops on Wednesday launched military operations against ISIL insurgents in three cities in central Iraq, fighting to regain control of lost ground, security sources said.

The offensives in Ramadi, Falluja and Haditha in the western province of Anbar started before dawn.

The new military offensive and the US airstrikes near Baghdad mark an expansion of a campaign to push ISIL back from areas it has captured in western and northern Iraq.

US airstrikes were previously focused on ISIL forces in northern Iraq, in support of Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

According to Iraqi military and tribal leaders, US jets omn Wednesday struck three ISIL targets in an area south of Baghdad that has been dubbed the “triangle of death”, killing at least four militants.

A leader of the Janabi tribe in the flashpoint region of Jurf Al Sakhr, less than 50 kilometres south of Baghdad, said Iraqi soldiers had fought ISIL militants until early on Wednesday.

“The main focus was an area of Jurf Al Sakhr called Fadhiliya. They fought deep into the night but the Iraqi army was not able to enter the place,” said a leader from the local Janabi tribe.

The US military issued a statement late on Tuesday that spoke of three airstrikes south-west of Baghdad but did not specify where.

The Jurf Al Sakhr region is seen as a key area because it sits on the Euphrates River between the major Sunni insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and the country’s most revered Shiite holy sites south of the capital.

The tribal leader and an army lieutenant said the push was led by the Golden Brigade, which is widely recognised as the best force in the country.

Critics say it may be the only credible fighting force in what is sometimes derided as “a checkpoint army”.

The brigade, which spearheaded an offensive to retake the country’s largest dam north of Mosul last month, has been hopping from one key frontline to another.

The US administration has said that its strategy in Iraq would involve helping to revamp an army it had not finished training when the eight-year occupation ended in 2011.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said on Tuesday that US military advisers could “provide close-combat advising”.

But the White House insisted the idea of US troops in battle was a “purely hypothetical scenario”.

The more than 160 airstrikes launched by the US since August 8 have achieved some results, apparently forcing top ISIL leaders to cross the border back into neighbouring Syria.

On Tuesday, Kurdish peshmerga forces – which have been receiving military equipment from Washington and some of its western allies – retook seven Christian villages east of Mosul with US air support.

The villages had been emptied of their population during an ISIL offensive in August.

According to a senior Kurdish leader, Roj Nuri Shaways, a top ISIL military commander known as Abu Abdullah was killed in the fighting.

Calls have been mounting in Iraq for Washington to expand its air support to Sunni tribesmen fighting the jihadists, particularly in the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad.

* Agence France-Press