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Iraqi Army Repels Attack on Base Hosting U.S. Marines

Iraqi security forces on Friday repelled an attack by Islamic State insurgents against an air base in Anbar province where U.S. Marines are training Iraqi troops, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said. Militants from the jihadist group had attacked the Ain al-Asad base and the nearby town of al-Baghdadi a day earlier, leading to sporadic clashes in the town overnight.

Al-Baghdadi has been besieged for months by Islamic State, which captured swathes of northern and western Iraq last year, prompting a campaign of U.S.-led airstrikes and the deployment of hundreds of U.S. military advisers to the country.

 

A U.S. defense official said the Iraqi forces had stopped the attack and re-secured the facility.

"Coalition forces were several kilometers from the attack and at no stage were they under direct threat from this action," the official said.

About 320 U.S. Marines are training members of the Iraqi 7th Division at the base, which has been struck by mortar fire on at least one previous occasion since December.

Iraq's Defense Ministry said on its website the Iraqi army killed eight assailants near the base, which is about 85 km (50 miles) northwest of Ramadi.

An Iraqi military official in Baghdad told Reuters the insurgents had taken advantage of a lull in the airstrikes, caused by poor weather, to launch the offensive.

He said Islamic State had been cleared from most of al-Baghdadi, with the remaining fighting centered around a police station.

 

That conflicted with reports from a tribal leader who said the jihadists were still in control of much of the town.
Ongoing clashes and poor communications in the area made it difficult to confirm such reports.

U.S. defense officials told CNN there are no plans to evacuate U.S. personnel from the air base, which is just a few miles from al-Baghdadi, but security officials said the militants are closing in on it and Iraqi forces are calling for reinforcements.

According to officials, the base has not been attacked but is taking sporadic indirect fire from militants in the form of rocket launchers and mortars.

Two security officials told CNN that security forces from the base killed eight suicide bombers on Friday who were trying to penetrate the air base.

At the same time, a U.S. defense official said that U.S. troops do not consider themselves trapped, are not contemplating a ground engagement with the Islamic State, and there have been no injuries to U.S. forces at the base, CNN said.

"It bears watching," retired Col. Thomas Lynch, a National Defense University fellow, told Fox News, regarding the reports.

He stressed, however, that for the militants to be a real threat to the base they would need get through the perimeter.

"It's not impossible," Lynch said, but to do it they would have to amass a large number of fighters — which would make them "vulnerable" to airstrikes.