MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti) – The United States has sent 130 military advisers to the Kurdish semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Wednesday.
The "assessment team members" have already arrived to the area of intense hostilities near the Kurdish capital of Abril to "give more indepth assessment of where we can continue to help," the US top military commander said.
Hagel hurried to dispel possible suspicions of a ground operation, saying this “is not a combat boots for the ground kind of operation.”
Previous reports said the US on-the-ground presence included 250 military advisers, with 90 people gauging the threat coming from the Islamic State (IS) militant group and the rest 160 helping Kurds to boost their defenses against the IS.
The United States has been providing humanitarian aid to Yazidi Kurds in northern Iraq fleeing from Islamic State militants' onslaught. The US Air Force has also been bombing IS targets and helping to ship weapons to Iraqi Kurds battling the extremists.
The Islamic State is a Sunni group, also known as ISIL and ISIS, which has been fighting in Syria and launched an offensive in Iraq in June. The group has taken over large parts of the country, with the goal of seizing Baghdad. Also in June, insurgents announced the establishment of a caliphate on the Iraq-Syria border.
