Boom: Canadian troops and ISIS exchange fire in first confirmed ground battle in Iraq

It was only a matter of time before Western soldiers serving as advisors to Iraqi troops began to take on a role more closely resembling conventional ground forces. Any soldier or journalist who has served as a combat advisor or alongside one knows that, when the gunfire starts, the distinctions between advisor and combatant quickly blurs. That blurring has begun.

On Monday, a Canadian brigadier general confirmed to reporters that Canadian troops were recently engaged by forces loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and they returned fire.

Via The Lebanon Daily Star:

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Canadian special forces exchanged gunfire with Islamic State fighters in Iraq in recent days, in the first confirmed ground battles between Western troops and IS, a briefing heard Monday.

“My troops had completed a planning session with senior Iraqi leaders several kilometers behind the front lines,” Brigadier General Michael Rouleau said.

“When they moved forward to confirm the planning at the front lines in order to visualize what they had discussed over a map, they came under immediate and effective mortar and machine gunfire.”

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It is only a matter of time before American troops stationed in dangerous theaters of combat operations in Iraq like Anbar province are forced to shed their advisory capacity and engage in direct combat with ISIS.

And when the shooting starts, it will likely start in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province. U.S. soldiers guarding an Iraqi military base in Anbar are coming under frequent mortar fire from ISIS positions and, while the attacks have caused no injuries yet, that luck can only hold for so long.


[excerpted, more at link above]


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