THE US has deployed hundreds more soldiers to Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in a final offensive to obliterate
the Islamic State.
The US is sending hundreds of soldiers to Iraq to wipe out ISIS


US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced the deployment


The US wants to return Mosul to Iraqi authorities by the end of the year


Fehim Isa (C), one of the commanders of Free Syrian Army (FSA) Sultan Murad Brigade, poses with the other members of FSA as the

End of ISIS? US deploys hundreds more soldiers to Iraq to DESTROY Islamic State

09/29/2016
ISIS first occupied Mosul, in northern Iraq, in 2014, and has subjected local people to a reign of terror, but the US is on a mission to retake the city and return it to Iraqi authorities by the end of the year.
The city had a population of 2.5million before ISIS seize it, but it is estimated that 500,000 civilians managed to flee before the jihadis arrived.

The remaining two million have been forced to endure the militants' horrific governance, with ISIS killing and exiling up to 70,000 Christians and selling local Yazidi women as sex slaves.
The death cult's bases in the city have been decimated by US-led airstrikes and assassinations, causing the militants to remove their troops from the streets due to fears of ground attacks.
But now the US is beefing up its deployment, adding more soldiers to the 4,600 already operating in the country.

The troops will be based at Qayyarah, an airbase south of Mosul and will be tasked with transporting supplies to the city.
They will also be stationed at a joint Iraqi and US air base and will help improve night and low visibility military operations.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said: "We are certainly going to continue to help the Iraqi security forces in whatever measure and manner they wish to consolidate the control over their country after they've recaptured this last major ISIL centre.

"These (US) forces will be primarily to enable Iraqi security focus, and also peshmerga, in the operations to isolate and collapse ISIL's control over Mosul."
He added that their purpose was "also to protect and expand Iraqi security forces' gains elsewhere in Iraq."
But Mr Carter warned: "I need to make clear, American forces combating ISIL in Iraq are in harm's way. No one should be in any doubt about that."
Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office indicated that the country had requested "a final increase in the number of American trainers and advisers" to support its troops in the city.

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