Members of a US-led coalition are ready to send roughly 1,500 security personnel to Iraq to help the Baghdad government in its fight against Islamic State group, the American commander of the war effort said Monday. Coalition partners meeting last week in the region made initial pledges that would bring "close" to 1,500 forces to Iraq to train and assist the country's army, in addition to the Americans already mobilised, Lieutenant General James Terry told reporters in Kuwait City.
The US general did not indicate which countries from the coalition would provide the security personnel or give a breakdown of how many of them would be in uniform or otherwise. Terry said he was encouraged at the willingness of allies to send trainers and advisers to the December 2-3 meeting and that the details of the contributions were still being discussed. "We're still working through it," he said. "I want to give them time to go back to their nations' capitals and work out the specifics of that." But he said "the large percentage" of the contributions would be aimed at training Iraqi troops to "build partner capacity".
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