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Shia militias share Iraqi military base with US troops

June 24, 2015 at 12:14 pm

America’s defence department has confirmed that a small number of Shia militiamen are sharing Iraq’s Taqaddum military base in Anbar province alongside US troops there to train Sunni tribal fighters. “There are some individuals who are serving in some sort of liaison capacity who are members of Shia militias,” Pentagon spokesman Steve Warren told reporters on Tuesday.

Warren insisted that the liaison forces and American soldiers are kept apart and have no interaction. “The government of Iraq is helping with the coordination of this separation of these groups.”

The US has applied force protection measures to mitigate any risk from anything there, the Pentagon spokesman pointed out. “There is an inherent risk already in the Anbar province, but I don’t believe that this handful of Shia militia poses an additional risk to our forces over there.”

The US administration announced on 10 June that it will deploy 450 troops to the Taqaddum base to train Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province, but said that the Iraqi government must remove all Shia militia units from the base in advance of the arrival of US personnel.