Mosul offensive

Some 32 militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were killed in a Turkish Armed Force operation in Bashiqa near Mosul on April 19 after the militants launched an attack on a tank belonging to the Turkish army in the Bashiqa training camp. 

The United States will deploy additional forces to Iraq and make Apache attack helicopters available to support the country's troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said April 18 in Baghdad.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Iraq on April 8 to show support for its prime minister, who is grappling with a political crisis, a collapsing economy and a fitful fight to retake ground from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants. 

President Barack Obama will have the chance to decide on whether to increase the number of U.S. forces in Iraq in the "coming weeks," the top U.S. general said on March 30. 

Turkey, as a country shaken through consecutive massive terror activities, is currently in the middle of a ring of fire, the Turkish prime minister has said, adding its security starts off its Syria-Iraqi borders and over a line passing through Syria's Latakia, Aleppo and Iraq's Mosul and Sulaymaniyah. 

The Iraqi army said March 24 that its troops and allied militia had launched what is expected to be a long and difficult offensive to retake the second city of Mosul, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) main hub in Iraq.

Iraq's armed forces started an offensive against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on March 24 in the region around Mosul with air cover from the U.S.-led coalition, pushing the militants out of several villages, according to a military statement read on state TV. 

A fledgling U.S. base in northern Iraq came under attack again on March 21 from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and even drew a threat from an Iran-backed Shi'ite militia, two days after a U.S. Marine there was killed in a rocket attack. 

The Pentagon has assigned a detachment of U.S. marines on the ground in Iraq to support international coalition efforts against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), it announced on March 20, one day after one U.S. marine was killed in an ISIL attack in northern Iraq. 

Preparations to retake Iraq's Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is continuing, according to a top U.S. official assigned to the coalition.