US sends more troops to Iraq

Washington: Two senior Islamic State group leaders were killed in US and coalition airstrikes in northern Iraq over the last week, US officials said on Thursday, as defense secretary Chuck Hagel approved new orders for several hundred troops to deploy to Iraq to train Iraqi forces. According to one of the US officials, airstrikes killed a key deputy of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militants, and one of al-Baghdadi’s military chiefs. A third militant, described as a mid-level leader, was also killed.

Words of the deaths came after Mr Hagel signed orders Wednesday for the first group of US troops to go to Iraq as part of the administration’s recent decision to deploy 1,500 more American forces to the country. The troops are to advise and train Iraqi forces. The top US commander for the mission in Iraq and Syria said on Thursday the next wave of American troops will begin moving into Iraq in a couple of weeks, and cautioned that it will take at least three years to build the capabilities of the Iraqi military.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds claimed on Thursday to have broken a siege on a mountain where Yazidi civilians and fighters have long been trapped as the US said air strikes killed several Islamic State leaders in recent weeks.

Masrour Barzani, the son of the Kurdish president and the intelligence chief for the Iraqi autonomous region, said the peshmerga advance had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar. “Peshmerga forces have reached Mount Sinjar, the siege on the mountain has been lifted,” he told reporters.