Iraq's volunteer forces say US Marines must leave
A group of Iraqi volunteer forces have called on the US marines, recently deployed to the country under the pretext of fighting Daesh, to leave or they will be treated as “forces of occupation.”
Washington announced Sunday that a detachment of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, an air-ground force of 2,200 troopers, had arrived in Iraq to join the fight against the Takfiri Daesh terrorists.
“The forces of occupation are making a new suspicious attempt to restore their presence in the country under the pretext of fighting their own creation, Daesh,” Iraqi Asa’ib Al al-Haq forces said Tuesday.
US officials did not disclose the exact number of the marines that were dispatched to the Arab country.
Pentagon says there are about 3,500 American forces stationed in Iraq, a figure that according to US Army Colonel Steve Warren, stationed in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, is an underestimation.
In late February, a US official said that the US army’s elite Delta Force units were preparing for operations to target, detain or kill what is said to be the main Daesh operators in Iraq.
On Saturday the US Defense Department acknowledged the death of an American service member in Iraq’s northern region, where American forces are leading air strikes against alleged Daesh positions as part of a US-led military campaign in Iraq and Syria.
Iraq has on several occasions complained about the ineffectiveness of the aerial campaign launched by the US and its allies since June 2014.
Iraqis say a significant number of attacks have been carried out without coordination with Baghdad, increasing the likelihood of the coalition fighter jets targeting Iraqi civilians and military forces.
In mid-December last year, several Iraqi soldiers were either killed or injured by a US airstrike as they were advancing on the positions of the terrorists near Amriyat al-Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
Syria has also submitted complaint letters to the United Nations, accusing the US-led forces of huge damages to the country’s infrastructure and leaving behind many civilian casualties.
The US began withdrawing its troops from Iraq in 2007 and allegedly completed the process in 2011, eight years into a chaotic invasion of the country under the false pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction.
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