US ‘eyeing new air base’ in Iraq amid talk of major offensive on ISIS
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Washington is working to install a new air base in Iraq’s Kurdistan to be used in a campaign against Islamic State (ISIS), media report. This comes as the White House’s special envoy on ISIS speaks of a ground operation in Iraq against the militants.
This time an American stronghold in the region will be deployed in Erbil, the capital of semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq that is expected to be used as a logistics hub to supply primarily munitions for warplanes of the US-led coalition against ISIS militants.
“The base is close to Erbil, the capital of the regional government…The warplanes will do surveillance, but the warplanes which will bomb ISIL targets will not take off from here,”Helgurt Hikmet, spokesperson for the Ministry of Peshmerga (Kurdish self-defense forces) said, as cited by Anadolu Agency.
Turkey’s Hurriyet also reported that the US is preparing documents to get land leasehold for the next 15 years to station US military personnel and warplanes. A number of the US Air Force’s Black Hawk helicopters have already been deployed to Erbil earlier this month, to ensure quick rescue operations to save downed pilots bombing ISIS positions in Northern Iraq. Such operations became a priority after ISIS fighters burnt alive a downed Jordanian pilot.
Fighter jets of the US and its western allies have been conducting airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq since early August. Starting from September 23, the US and its Arab allies: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates started bombing ISIS in Syria, without obtaining any authorization either from Damascus or a UN mandate.
“There will be a major counter offensive on the ground in Iraq,”retired Marine Corps General John Allen, the White House special envoy on the Islamic State, told Jordan’s official Petra news agency a week ago. The operation is actually supposed to be an Iraqi army offensive supported by the anti-ISIS coalition firepower.
But on Friday, the Islamic State carried out a coordinated suicide bomber attack against the air base housing 320 US Marines just eight kilometers away from the western Iraqi city of al-Baghdadi, confirmed to be under the extremists’ control now. /End/