Region

BAGHDAD — Daesh militants attacked government forces and their Shiite militia allies on Saturday, killing 11 near the city of Baiji as part of the battle for control of Iraq's biggest refinery, army and police sources said.

Four suicide bombers in vehicles packed with explosives hit security forces and the local headquarters of the Shiite militias in the area of Al Hijjaj, 10km to the south of Baiji town, near the refinery, sources at the nearby Tikrit security operations command said.

Iraqi government forces and powerful Iranian-backed Shiite militias face Daesh on several fronts in Iraq, a major oil producer and OPEC member.

They include areas around Baiji refinery, north of Baghdad, and the city of Ramadi west of the capital, seized last month by Daesh, the ultra-hardline Sunni group that poses the biggest threat to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Ramadi is the provincial capital of Anbar Province, Iraq's Sunni heartland.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama ordered the deployment of 450 more US troops to Anbar to advise and assist fragile Iraqi forces being built up to try to retake territory lost to Daesh.

Iraq has been struggling to find a formula for stability since the last US troops withdrew in 2011, with the battle against Daesh and widespread sectarian bloodletting severly hampering efforts to rebuild the economy.

Daesh’s drive, its hardline views and ambitions to create a “caliphate” where opponents are executed or beheaded, have exacerbated Iraq's sectarian conflict.

In eastern Iraq, tensions between Kurdish and Shiite forces ran high on Saturday for a second consecutive day. The two sides have in the past joined forces against Daesh but competition for territory can sometimes undermine cooperation.

Trouble erupted when Kurdish peshmerga fighters began digging a trench to separate two towns in Diyala province.

On Saturday, clashes flared anew, police sources said, adding that four Shiite militiamen and two Kurdish peshmerga fighters had been wounded.

The Iraqi army depends heavily on support from the umbrella Shi'ite militia group Popular Mobilisation Front in the face of advances from Daesh.

Unlike its predecessor in Iraq, Al Qaeda, Daesh holds territory it captures, while also conducting suicide bombings and beheadings. It now controls a third of Iraq, as well as large parts of neighbouring Syria.

Daesh holds territory in Libya and has militant sympathisers in Egypt, the most populous Arab state. 

TRIPOLI — Ten Tunisian consular staff kidnapped in Libya's capital Tripoli are in good condition and contact has been made with their captors, the interior minister for Libya's self-declared government said on Saturday.

Tunisia said on Friday an armed group had stormed the consulate and kidnapped staff. Most diplomats left Tripoli after an armed faction called Libya Dawn took over the city and set up its own government there last summer.

"I am in contact with the group who abducted the Tunisian staff and hopefully the staff will be freed soon," Interior Minister Mohammed Shaiteer told Reuters. "They are in good condition."
No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, but Libya is in turmoil with two rival governments and their armed factions — one in Tripoli and the other, internationally recognised administration in the east — battling for control.

Gunmen have kidnapped Egyptian, Jordanian and Tunisian diplomats and citizens before in an attempt to force the release of Libyan militants and fighters held in those countries.

Tunisian authorities last month arrested Walid Kalib, a member of Libya Dawn. On Thursday, a Tunisian court refused to release Kalib who faces kidnapping charges in Tunisia.

Libya Dawn, a loose alliance of former rebel brigades and Islamist-leaning groups, seized power in Tripoli last summer, expelling the existing government which now operates from the east.

Most countries closed their embassies during the fighting that ensued, but Tunisia has recently sent consular staff back to Tripoli.

Relations between the North African neighbours have become increasingly tense, with Tunisia's government worried about spillover from the chaos that continues to plague Libya four years after the overthrow of strongman Muammar Qadhafi.

SANAA — Nine people were killed when Saudi-led coalition warplanes bombed a district in the Yemeni capital Sanaa inhabited by relatives of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, residents and medics said.

The air raid, which also wounded at least 60 people, came ahead of planned UN-sponsored talks in Geneva aimed at ending Yemen's civil war that has drawn in regional powers, including the world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.

Residents said the warplanes had targeted vacant houses in Bait Me'yad, a district near the heart of Sanaa that is home to a number of relatives of Saleh, whose loyalists are allied with Houthi forces, the dominant armed faction in the conflict.

Mohammed Yahya, an eyewitness, said two missiles struck two Saleh relatives' houses while the third crashed in the middle of the neighbourhood, causing several casualties. Another witness said three explosions shook the neighbourhood.

"We felt as if the house was going to collapse over our heads," said the man, identified as Ali Ahmed. "We ran, with the children, and hid under the stairwell. It was terrifying."
Medical sources said nine people who had suffered severe injuries died on arrival at hospital while 60 others were under care at three hospitals in the capital.

The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said most of the victims were women and children.

In the southern port of Aden, residents said a dozen people were killed or wounded by Houthi shells fired into districts in the north of the city. Residents of Aden’s Mansoura district described houses being shaken by overnight explosions.

Fighters in the Southern Resistance movement and supporters of Hadi had fended off Houthi efforts to advance from the north, Aden residents added.

Saleh remains influential in Yemen through his control of the former ruling party, the General People’s Congress, and the loyalty of many in the military, despite having stepped down after mass protests in 2011 against his long authoritarian rule.

He subsequently made common cause with the Houthis, members of the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam who seized control of Sanaa last September and forced president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee the Arabian Peninsula country.

The Saudi-led coalition is trying to restore Hadi to power. The Houthis, who have advanced across wide areas of Yemen, say they are pursuing a revolution against corruption and Sunni Muslim militants, and deny any military or economic links with Iran, which also says it accords them only diplomatic support.

Western powers and the Arab alliance fear Iran, via the Houthis, is trying to extend its regional influence into Yemen.

The World Health Organisation said on Friday that 2,584 people had been killed and 11,065 injured in the conflict, which has wrought a worsening humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations said on Friday that talks between Yemen’s warring parties scheduled for Sunday has been delayed by one day to Monday as one delegation was arriving late in Geneva.

GAZA — Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing on Saturday to allow Palestinians to travel in and out of the Gaza Strip for the first time in three months, in a possible sign of easing tension between Cairo and Gaza's dominant Islamist Hamas movement.

Gaza, a small impoverished coastal enclave, is under blockade by neighbouring Israel, and Egypt has kept its Rafah crossing largely shut since Cairo's Islamist president was toppled by the army in 2013.

A Palestinian official said seven trucks with building materials for the private sector entered Gaza on Saturday, the first time since 2007 that Egypt has allowed a commercial shipment via Rafah, which is mainly for passengers and humanitarian aid.

Two weeks ago, Egypt reopened Rafah for three days but only in one direction — for Palestinians stranded outside Gaza to return home. But Saturday's move, allowing travel in both directions, might signal a cautious improvement in relations between Cairo and Hamas after two years of high tension.

Local residents said an initial bus with passengers had crossed into Egypt and a source at Cairo International Airport said Palestinians were flying in to set out overland for Gaza.

Border officials said the new opening would last for three days and some Palestinian sources said it could be extended, although there was no immediate Egyptian confirmation about any possible extension.

Egypt has occasionally opened Rafah to allow passengers with foreign passports as well as students and hospital patients to travel. Israel, which waged war with Hamas in July and August last year, allows travel between it and Gaza largely only on humanitarian grounds such as relief aid and medical treatment.

Cairo has accused Hamas, which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, of helping militants in Egypt's Sinai desert, which borders on Gaza, attack its security forces. Hamas denies this.

But a decision by an Egyptian court earlier this month to cancel a previous ruling labelling Hamas a terrorist group was praised by Palestinian Islamists and raised speculation that relations between Egypt and Gaza may improve.

"The opening... for three days is a positive indicator, it comes after another good decision taken by the court. We hope Egypt opens the crossing permanently and can regain its role in Gaza and Palestine," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters.

Gaza officials said 15,000 people had registered to travel via Rafah in recent weeks, including at least 3,000 patients, and hundreds of students who study in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced 23 men to 14 years in jail without parole over the killing of four Shiite Muslims in 2013, judicial sources said.

The four Shiites, one of whom was a prominent cleric, were killed in June 2013 when a mob stormed a house in a small village near Cairo, angry that a Shiite religious ceremony had been performed.

The crowd threw petrol bombs at the house, which caught fire, and the victims' bodies were dragged through the streets.

Egypt is predominantly Sunni Muslim and Shiites, who form only a small minority of the 90 million-strong population, keep a low profile.

The attack occurred weeks before Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was toppled by the army, when mass protests, lawlessness and unrest paralysed the country.

Egypt has long been criticised by foreign governments and international rights groups for discriminating against its religious minorities, including Bahais, Shiites and Coptic Christians.

Eight other defendants were acquitted of charges related to the Shiite killings. The defence said it would appeal Saturday's ruling.

Mubarak-era minister acquitted

Also on Saturday, Egypt's High Court upheld a one-year jail sentence for Abdallah Morsi, son of former president Morsi, who was convicted of abusing cannabis.

Abdallah Morsi denies the charges, and supporters say the case against him was falsified and part of a smear campaign.

The same court also upheld the acquittal of former housing minister Ahmed Al Maghrabi of corruption charges. Maghrabi who served in government under Hosni Mubarak, whose 30-year rule was ended by a popular uprising in 2011.

Mubarak-era figures who after the uprising were tried for corruption or other abuses of power are increasingly being cleared. Along with the introduction of new laws limiting political freedoms, this trend is raising fears that the old leadership is regaining influence.

The government denies allegations of rights abuses.

The High Court also ordered a retrial of seven militants sentenced to death last year over the August 2013 killing of 25 soldiers in Northern Sinai. Islamist militants have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen since Morsi was ousted.

GAZA CITY — The family of four Palestinian children killed when Israel bombed a beach during last summer's Gaza war were indignant Friday over the closure of a probe into the incident.

The Israeli army, which launched the investigation after the 50-day July-August war ended, announced late Thursday that the "tragic" attack witnessed by several foreign journalists had not violated international law, and said it was closing the case.

It was one of the most widely covered and controversial incidents of the war, taking place in full view of international media, including AFP correspondents, who were sitting outdoors very close to the beach at the time of the attack.

"Israel behaves as if it's a country above international law," Zakariya Bakr, the uncle of the children who died, told AFP.

"It's not unusual for the occupation [Israel], which shells houses with their occupants inside them and kills children, to declare its soldiers innocent.

"We urge the international community to act seriously to stop this farce," he said, referring to several army investigations into alleged misconduct during the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

On July 16, cousins Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakaria Ahed Bakr, both aged 10, nine-year-old Mohamed Ramez Bakr and 11-year-old Ismail Mohamed Bakr were playing on the beach in Gaza City when they were hit in two separate air strikes.

The incident is among those likely to be presented by the Palestinians to the International Criminal Court as evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes.

But the army said in its report that it had decided to "close the investigation file, in the absence of a suspicion regarding the commission of a criminal offence by IDF [Israel Defence Forces] soldiers."
The report said the army had targeted an area of the beach that had been used exclusively by militants and separated from civilians.

It also said the "attack was aimed at figures who were understood to be militants from Hamas's naval forces," and that they were "not identified, at any point during the incident, as children".

"Under the circumstances... it would not have been possible for the operational entities involved to have identified these figures, via aerial surveillance, as children," it added.

Western journalists who witnessed the incident and its aftermath, and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the children had been playing on that area of the beach, which was not clearly separated from civilians.

"It was absolutely crystal clear... from the figures running, that they were children," one journalist said.

"They were all very, very small, I thought they were much younger than they were."

At an IDF briefing where probes into Gaza were announced, he said, the army showcased their surveillance capability to distinguish civilians from militants.

"There needs to be a question answered, how did they not know they were children?"

The army said it based the investigation on testimony by soldiers and officers, media footage and other documents, but was unable to take direct witness testimony from Gazans because witnesses declined to meet.

One Western journalist said he had volunteered himself to a senior IDF official as a witness, but he was never contacted.

The war killed 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians and more than 500 of them children, and 73 on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.

TEHRAN — Iran's president warned Saturday that haggling by world powers could jeopardise the deadline for a nuclear agreement, admitting many differences remain on the details of a potentially historic deal.

Hassan Rouhani, who has placed his credibility on ending more than a decade of international concern that the Islamic republic is developing a nuclear bomb, also acknowledged sanctions would not be lifted immediately under the accord, which is due by June 30.

He made the remarks in Tehran a day after Russia's senior negotiator spoke of a "very worrying" slowdown in progress in painstaking diplomacy which has lasted 21 months.

With the finishing line in sight, Rouhani, speaking at a press conference marking two years since his unexpected election victory, accused the other side of agreeing terms in one meeting only to try and improve on them during later discussions.

"They start to haggle, causing delays in the negotiation," he said, without mentioning which of the six powers in the talks with Iran was responsible.

"If the other party respects the agreed framework and does not add other demands, the differences can be resolved but if they choose the path of haggling then it can prolong the negotiations," he added.

Iran and the P5+1 group (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany) agreed the outlines of the nuclear deal on April 2 after intensive talks went past a March 31 deadline.

In Washington on Friday, State Department spokesman Jeffrey Rathke admitted the talks were proving "complicated", but the US believes a deal can still be reached by the end of June.

And on Thursday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius — seen as something of a hawk in negotiations — said the issue of tighter UN inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities was not yet sewn up.
With deputy foreign ministers and technical experts currently meeting in Vienna in the run up to the proposed final talks in late June, Russia's senior negotiator spoke Friday of slow progress.
"There is very little time before the deadline and we urgently need to enter the final stage," said Sergei Ryabkov, a deputy foreign minister.

Alluding to those concerns, Rouhani said there are still "many differences over details that must be addressed" under the deal, which aims to guarantee that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful, but he remained "hopeful" of an agreement.

The proposed accord would mothball large parts of Tehran's atomic programme in exchange for a lifting of extensive sanctions that have severely damaged its economy.

'Months' to remove sanctions 

But the process of implementing each side's obligations under a complex agreement lasting at least a decade dominated the talks since April 2 remains unsettled.

Rouhani has come under pressure from lawmakers and hardliners who say sanctions must be lifted when the deal is signed, despite most experts agreeing it will take significant time to do so.

"We are currently discussing it," he said, when asked about the timing of sanctions being removed, noting that "weeks or even months will pass" between signing and implementing the deal.

A UN Security Council resolution to cancel previous resolutions on nuclear matters "will be the first major step and a guarantee" for delivering the accord, he said.

"Then it will take several months to implement all the commitments," he added, referring to the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States.

Those sanctions, implemented in 2012, targeted the oil and financial sectors of Iran and plunged the country into a deep economic crisis which led to inflation above 40 per cent.

Rouhani said the talks were "so far a great victory for the Iranian nation", insisting that the major powers have recognised Iran's right to possess a uranium enrichment programme at its Natanz facility and that other nuclear sites will remain open.

But he also hit out at those in Iran who sought to downplay the effect of sanctions, saying they had halted foreign investment.

"OK, the country can survive... but if we want to compete in the world we need them removed," he said. "No big country can thrive behind closed doors."

NAJRAN, Saudi Arabia — After 11 weeks of air strikes that have failed to change the balance of power in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is running out of options to restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's exiled government to Sanaa.

Despite the destruction of much of their heavy weaponry, the Houthi militia and army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh control most of the country's populated west and still daily attack Saudi territory with mortar fire or missiles.

The possibility of a ground operation in support of the ragtag local groups still fighting the Houthis in Aden, Taiz, Marib and Al Dhala appears to have been discounted by the Saudis and their allies in an Arab coalition from early on.

Riyadh may soon have to face an unpalatable choice: Accept the de facto control of its foes over Sanaa and cut a deal, or keep fighting with the risk of Yemen sinking into total chaos, becoming a permanent threat to Saudi security.

UN-sponsored talks start in Geneva next week aimed at ending almost two months of war, which has killed more than 2,500 people, but there is little sign either Hadi or the Iranian-backed Houthis are ready to make compromises.

From a small frontier post on a desolate, windswept plateau overlooking the Saudi border town of Najran, the distant crump of explosions reminds the handful of soldiers surrounding two armoured cars that the Houthis remain entrenched nearby.

A mortar fell only 100 metres from their post a few hours earlier, the soldiers said, peering through binoculars at a flat-topped Yemeni mountain, dim in the ghostly afternoon haze. Each night they watch the blasts from Saudi shells and missiles.

That the militia's fighters have been able to continue lobbing mortar shells at Saudi border posts, killing over a dozen Saudi troops, shows how hard it is for even a superbly equipped military to defeat such mobile guerrilla forces.

Recent suicide attacks and shootings inside the kingdom also reveal the danger posed to Riyadh by Sunni Muslim jihadists, who have taken advantage of Yemen’s chaos to consolidate a presence on the other side of the long, porous border.

Avoiding such disintegration in Yemen was a leading war aim of Riyadh, which believed the Houthi advance would accelerate sectarian divisions and end a Gulf-backed political process aimed at creating a stable, representative government.

“The US is pushing the Saudis to accept talks but they are reluctant because they are in such a weak position on the ground in Yemen,” said a diplomat who follows the matter closely.

Iran

Despite the fading prospect of political or military success inside Yemen, Saudi Arabia may still see its campaign as ultimately worthwhile for one big reason: Iran.

For years Riyadh has accused Iran of meddling in Yemen by backing the Houthi militia. Its accusations became louder when the Houthis exploited wider chaos last year to advance from its northern stronghold to the capital Sanaa, and then overrun the government and push south.

Most analysts believe Saudi fears of Iranian involvement in Yemen are overblown, and say Tehran has little control over the Houthis, but in the crucible of a wider struggle for influence, Riyadh could not accept its foe gaining power in Sanaa.

An Iranian member of parliament’s boast last year that Sanaa had become the fourth Arab capital to fall to Tehran’s influence after Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus when the Houthis took the city seemed to confirm Saudi fears.

When daily direct flights started between Tehran and Houthi-controlled Sanaa in January, Riyadh believed they were carrying weapons and other materiel that would ultimately threaten the kingdom directly. It was a turning point in their approach.

“You have to remember the situation three months ago. Without strikes, the Houthis would be everywhere. The Iranians would be more present than ever before. Right or wrong, this was their feeling,” said a Gulf-based diplomat on Saudi thinking.

However, most senior Saudi figures now accept the military campaign can achieve little more and it is time for talks, even though the Houthis and Saleh hold the strongest cards by controlling swathes of Yemen, the diplomat said.

Negotiations

Both Riyadh and Hadi’s exiled government are increasingly calling for the international community to enforce UN Security Council resolution 2216, which was approved in April and demands the Houthis quit Yemeni cities and hand over their arms.

“It is the responsibility of the international community and the security council,” said Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, citing the example of Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait in 1991.

He added the coalition was focused on implementing 2216 because it offered the best chance of stabilising Yemen long term. “It should be implemented to make sure of a final result to this situation. We have to think strategically,” he said.

From the border post, where a tangle of scrub is the only sign of life on a steep slope of car-sized, pebble-smooth boulders, the chances of international intervention against a guerrilla army in Yemen’s messy civil war look slim.

Riyadh is working with the exiled government to train some Yemeni fighters, but creating a proxy army that could roll back the Houthis and then establish stability would be a long-term undertaking with only precarious chances of success.

However, Saudi Arabia’s continued bombing and insistence on implementation of 2216, which would in effect require surrender by the Houthis and Saleh, may be simply a precursor to talks, said the Gulf-based diplomat.

Riyadh has acknowledged from the beginning that the Houthis will be part of any eventual political settlement, but wanted them to be a minor player rather than a dominant one and for Hadi’s government to return to Sanaa.

However, they may accept a deal that gives the exiled government some form of token return, alongside the Houthis, so long as the group’s material links to Iran remain severed.

“From Saudi Arabia’s point of view, that would mean the situation in Yemen was better than before its air strikes began,” the diplomat said.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels seized most of a military airport in regime-controlled Sweida province Thursday and shot down a warplane nearby, a spokesman told AFP.

"The Southern Front has liberated Al Thaala military airport and is carrying out mopping-up operations against remaining forces," the alliance's spokesman, Major Essam Al Rayes, told AFP.

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights also reported the rebel advance into the airport in the Druze-majority southern province.

"They have control of parts of the airport, which is used by the regime for aircraft that bomb Daraa and Damascus provinces," said observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

But Syrian state television denied the claims, and interviewed the provincial governor, who accused media of spreading lies.

“There is no truth to claims that terrorist groups have occupied Al Thaala in Sweida province,” state television said, citing its reporter in the area.

“We’re used to the criminal media and their falsehoods; the information being reported is baseless and life continues as normal in the province,” Governor Atef Al Nadaf said.

Rayes also said Southern Front forces had shot down a warplane in the border region between Sweida and neighbouring Daraa province.

The Britain-based Observatory reported the same, and state television acknowledged that “a warplane went down in the southern region and an investigation into the causes is under way”.
The Southern Front advance into Al Thaala Airport comes a day after the alliance, which groups moderate and Islamist rebel forces, seized the 52nd Brigade base in Daraa province.

Abdel Rahman said many of the regime forces who fled the 52nd Brigade as it was captured had withdrawn to Al Thaala, which lies some 10 kilometres away.

Sweida province has been spared much of the fighting in Syria, and remains almost entirely under regime control.

Most of its residents are Druze, followers of a secretive offshoot of Shiite Islam, who made up around 3 per cent of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million people.

The community has been somewhat divided during the country’s uprising, with some members fighting alongside the government while others expressing sympathy for the opposition.

Mostly, the Druze have taken up arms only in defence of their areas, and have kept out of the fighting more broadly.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, the Southern Front sought to reassure Sweida’s residents.
“We stress that the people of Sweida are our brothers and our people, and we... will not fight them,” Rayes said in the statement.

“We are ready to confront hand-in-hand all threats to Sweida province if we are asked to do so.”
The statement also condemned “in the strongest terms” the deaths of at least 20 Druze residents reportedly killed by Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front in Idlib on Wednesday.

The deaths in Qalb Lawzah sparked condemnation from Druze leaders in Syria and Lebanon.

The Southern Front has sought to distance itself from Al Nusra and said in March it would not cooperate with the group.

But it has found itself fighting on the same side as the Al Qaeda affiliate, including in battles against the Daesh terror group.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces battling militants on several fronts Thursday were poised to receive the help of 450 extra US troops slated for deployment near Ramadi.

Washington’s decision to send more advisers and trainers to Iraq has failed to silence critics who say the White House lacks a strategy to combat the Daesh terror group.

A year after a militant offensive saw the government lose swathes of Iraq, military operations to weaken Daesh were experiencing mixed fortunes.

The autonomous Kurdistan region’s peshmerga forces pushed south and west of Kirkuk on the back of intensive bombing by Iraqi and US-led coalition warplanes, security officials said.

One of the targets was a bomb-making workshop Daesh had set up after their main car bomb factory in nearby Hawijah was completely levelled in a coalition air strike, one official said.

The June 3 strike caused an explosion that was heard 50 kilometres away and destroyed what some officials said was Daesh’s largest such plant in Iraq and Syria.

Federal troops and the Popular Mobilisation — an umbrella for mostly Shiite militias and volunteers — also continued operations aimed at securing Baiji, north of Baghdad.

The area has seen relentless fighting over the past year and loyalists in recent days achieved some progress in pushing Daesh fighters out of the town of Baiji as well as from the nearby refinery, the country’s largest.

Anti-Daesh forces launched a wide-ranging military operation early Thursday to clear “the last Daesh pockets along the Tigris River” around Baiji, an army major general said.

Establishing firm control over Baiji is seen as key to isolating Daesh in the vast western province of Anbar, whose reconquest is Baghdad’s declared priority.

The jihadists beat the government to the punch, seizing provincial capital Ramadi on May 17 and dealing Baghdad its worst setback in almost a year.

Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi vowed to swiftly retake Ramadi but operations have been sluggish and questions are still being asked about the security forces’ ability following their chaotic retreat from the city.

On Wednesday, US President Barack Obama approved the deployment of 450 more troops to Iraq, in what would nudge the ranks of Washington’s “train, advise and assist” mission above 3,500.

The new contingent will be based at Taqaddum Air Base, nestled along the Euphrates River between militant-held Ramadi and Fallujah.

“There is always a risk whenever we’re in Iraq that we could be hit with indirect fire, as we have in the past, that we could be attacked,” said senior Pentagon official Elissa Slotkin.

The fall of Ramadi last month was not just a blow to Baghdad but also to Washington’s strategy in tackling an ultraviolent group whose appeal has kept growing, making it a global threat.

The US-led coalition has carried out close to 4,500 air strikes since August and undertaken training to reform a security apparatus that completely folded when Daesh swept in a year ago.

US strategy 

Obama, who admitted the United States did not “yet have a complete strategy”, has come under intense criticism for allowing chaos to spiral in the region.

“I support the tactical move the president is taking, but where’s the overarching strategy,” asked House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, reacting to the announcement on the latest reinforcements.

The Soufan Group risk consultancy said seven years of US military presence following the 2003 invasion and billions of dollars invested in training and equipment had not prevented disaster.

“The logistics, non-commissioned officer cadre, and command and control that effective militaries depend upon were always missing from the new Iraqi army,” it said.

Several officials in Anbar said Thursday that Iraqi and foreign warplanes had bombed targets in and around Ramadi.