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Washington / AFP
US President Barack Obama said he expects Iraq’s second city Mosul to be retaken from the IS group “eventually”.
Obama’s comments in an interview with CBS News came on the same day that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Washington would send Apache attack helicopters and more troops to Iraq.
“As we see the Iraqis willing to fight and gaining ground, let’s make sure that we’re providing them more support,” Obama said. “We’re not doing the fighting ourselves, but when we provide training, when we provide special forces who are backing them up, when we are gaining intelligence what we’ve seen is that we can continually tighten the noose,” he added.
“My expectation is that by the end of the year, we will have created the conditions whereby Mosul will eventually fall.” Mosul, in northern Iraq, was overrun during an extremist offensive in June 2014 and has become an IS stronghold