Carter reviews anti-ISIS war in Iraq

Italy to send 450 troops to protect Iraq’s Mosul dam

US defence secretary Ashton Carter held talks in Baghdad Wednesday to review progress in the war against the ISIS.

Mr Carter, who on Tuesday visited a Turkish base that has become a key hub for air raids against the jihadists, met Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and defence minister Khaled al-Obeidi.

They discussed means of “improving cooperation between the two countries in the fields of arming and training,” a statement from Mr Abadi’s office said.

Mr Carter and his delegation also met US partners in the international anti-ISIS coalition, and were due to leave later Wednesday.

US aircraft carry out daily airstrikes against ISIS targets, most of them in the Iraqi part of the jihadists’ self-proclaimed “caliphate”, which also covers regions in Syria.

Out of the 11 strikes conducted by the coalition on Tuesday in Iraq, five were on targets in the area of Ramadi, which Iraqi forces are trying to wrest back from the ISIS, according to a US military statement.

President Barack Obama said on Monday the US and its allies were hitting the ISIS “harder than ever” and warned the extremists’ leaders: “You are next.”

Meanwhile, Italy is to send 450 troops to defend Iraq’s strategic Mosul dam, near the city occupied by the ISIS, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced.

The dam on the Tigris river, built by a German-Italian consortium in the 1980s and in which Italian company Trevi still has an interest, is a vital water and power source for Mosul, Iraq’s largest northern city.

“The call (to protect the dam) was made by an Italian company... And we will send 450 of our men there to help protect it alongside the Americans,” the Prime Minister said on national television late Tuesday.

Mosul, Iraq’s second city, has been occupied by ISIS jihadists since June 2014. Kurdish forces, backed by US airstrikes, retook the dam from ISIS in August 2014.

The dam, which provides water and energy to over a million people, “is in the heart of a dangerous zone, on the border with ISIS. It is seriously damaged and risks collapse,” Mr Renzi warned.

If the dam is destroyed by fighting it could unleash major flooding in Mosul and the capital Baghdad, 400 km to the south.

Italian construction and energy group Trevi has secured a $2 billion contract to shore up the dam. So far the security situation has been too precarious for those works to begin. The 450 Italian troops will be in addition to the 750 already on the ground in Iraq as part of international efforts.

Separately, ISIS militants who stormed into the Iraqi town of Sinjar last year, massacring members of the Yazidi minority and forcing women into sexual slavery, are gone. But Sunnis who lived alongside the Yazidis there for generations say their own nightmare is far from over.

After Kurdish forces and Yazidi militants backed by US-led airstrikes drove the extremist group from the town last month, there were widespread reports of vandalism and the looting of Muslim homes.

Many Sunni residents have yet to return, saying they fear revenge attacks.“They said they were against Sunnis, but are all Sunnis with Daesh " said Amer Eido, a Sinjar-born Sunni now living in a refugee camp, referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym.

“We fled with (the Yazidis) because of Daesh on the day that they came. We are in the same situation. There is no reason for them to loot our houses,” he said.