Britain to lead push to drive ISIS out of Iraq as Defence Secretary set to commit UK to further six months of intense operations
Extra support has been pledged as air strikes and ground attacks are stepped up
BRITAIN is to spearhead a major push to drive ISIS terrorists out of Iraq and eventually the Middle East for good.
Extra support has been pledged as air strikes and ground attacks are stepped up once the jihadi-held city of Mosul is liberated.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon will this week commit the UK to a further of six months of intense operations to defeat ISIS.
He will host a summit of coalition leaders to draw up key objectives to remove warlords from the final ten per cent of Iraqi land they occupy.
Mr Fallon will announce that 500 British troops are now training local fighters at al Asad – double the number there last summer.
And the deployment of Royal Engineers working to improve training facilities will be extended for a further six months.
More than 1,350 British men and women have committed to the operation – helping to train 31,000 Iraqi and Peshmerga forces.
The RAF is operating at its highest intensity in a single war zone for 25 years.
New figures show that in the past year, our planes have flown two-and-a-half times more hours than the busiest 12 months of operations in Afghanistan.
British jets have delivered nearly 11 times more strikes than the business equivalent period in Afghanistan, contributing to 1,162 strikes on IS positions in Iraq and Syria.
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In addition to the battle of Musul, where the UK is providing close air support to Iraqi forces, the RAF is also bombing IS positions in and around Raqqah as Syrian Democratic Forces advance towards the occupied city.
Mr Fallon said: “Britain is stepping up and making one of the biggest military contributions to defeating ISIS.
“The British Army has trained over 30,000 Iraqi and Peshmerga who are taking the fight to ISIS and the RAF, alongside our allies, are pounding ISIS in some of the most intense operations for decades.
“Working with our international partners to defeat these evil ISIS terrorists helps make the world more secure and the streets of Britain safer.”