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'Hundreds' of military trainers needed to recapture Mosul from Daesh

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Hundreds of military trainers needed to recapture Mosul from Daesh
A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter launches mortar shells towards Zummar, controlled by Daesh, near Mosul.

Washington - Following recent successful recapture of the Iraqi city of Ramadi by US-backed local forces, the Pentagon is now pushing for an assault on Mosul.

By AFP

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Published: Thu 21 Jan 2016, 10:20 AM

Last updated: Thu 21 Jan 2016, 12:23 PM

Iraqi security forces will need help from "hundreds" of Western military trainers ahead of a planned assault to recapture the city of Mosul from Daesh militants, a US official said Wednesday.
Mosul fell to Daesh fighters in June 2014 as they overran vast regions in northern and north-central Iraq, as well as in Syria.
Iraqi security forces who were supposed to secure the city collapsed in the face of the militant advance.
Following recent successes against the Daesh group, including the recapture of the Iraqi city of Ramadi by US-backed local forces, the Pentagon is now pushing Iraq to launch an assault on Mosul.
Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US-led coalition that has been fighting the group since August 2014, said extra trainers were needed to increase the fighting capacity of Iraqi security forces.
"That's really the next step in generating the amount of combat power needed to liberate Mosul," he told Pentagon reporters in a video call.
"We know we will need more brigades to be trained, we'll need more troops trained in more specialties."
His remarks follow comments a day earlier from Pentagon chief Ashton Carter, who called on the US-led coalition to gather more trainers.
Warren said the number of extra trainers would be "certainly hundreds."


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