US defence chief in Iraq to review Mosul operation

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter held talks in Baghdad on Sunday to discuss the coming stages of the offensive to retake the city of Mosul from the Daesh. 
Carter flew to the Iraqi capital on an announced visit to “survey key locations directly supporting the battle for Mosul,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The United States leads an international coalition providing assistance in the form of air strikes, equipment, training and advise on the ground to Iraqi forces battling the militants.
US forces are stationed in Qayyarah, the main staging base for the southern front of the Mosul offensive that was launched on Oct. 17, as well as in the autonomous Kurdish region.
Around 5,000 US troops are deployed in Iraq as part of an “advise and assist” mission to support Iraqi federal and Kurdish peshmerga forces battling militants.
US special forces are also active on the ground in Iraq, as well as in neighboring Syria, where another offensive is under way to retake the other major remaining Daesh bastion of Raqqa.
On Saturday, Carter told a security forum in Bahrain that Washington was sending 200 extra troops to join the 300 it has already deployed to support the Raqqa campaign.
Carter met US troops, senior coalition commanders and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in Baghdad, a coalition spokesman said.
He was also expected to hold meetings with Kurdish leader Massud Barzani during his visit to Iraq, possibly his last as US defense secretary.
Abadi had promised Mosul would be retaken by the end of 2016 but the going has been tough for Iraqi forces inside the densely populated city and commanders have warned the battle could go on for months.
Most of the fighting inside Mosul, where hundreds of civilians still live, has been carried out by Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service in the east of the city.
The army’s 9th and 11th divisions have also moved in, while a myriad of forces are deployed on other fronts south, north and west but have not entered the city.
Iraqi commander wounded
An Iraqi military commander was wounded and one of his bodyguards killed when Daesh militants fired mortar shells at his convoy south of Mosul on Sunday, officers from the local military command told Reuters.
They said a convoy carrying Lt. Gen. Jumaa Inad, head of operations in Salahuddin province, came under attack near the town of Shirqat where Iraqi forces are fighting to retake a Daesh-held enclave.
He had wounds to his head and arm and was flown to a hospital in Erbil, they said.
The fighting around Shirqat, in Salahuddin province, is part of a wider military campaign against Daesh in the north of the country. US-backed Iraqi force has been battling for eight weeks to crush the militants in Mosul, the largest city under Daesh control in Iraq and Syria.
Inad was visiting troops in the village of Ganous, on the eastern bank of the Tigris river about 90 km south of Mosul.

Source: Arab News