Officials: Islamic State militants killed after penetrating perimeter of Al Asad Air Base

WASHINGTON — Islamic State militants on Friday penetrated the perimeter of an Iraqi base where about 400 U.S. troops are stationed, according to military officials.

Eight insurgents attacked an Iraqi army facility on the Al Asad Air Base in Anbar province, according to a statement by Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

“The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) supported by Coalition surveillance assets defeated the attack, killing all eight attackers. The ISF have since re-secured their facility,” CJTF-OIR said in the statement.

Australian army Maj. Sarah Hawke, a task force spokeswoman, said the militants penetrated the perimeter of the base, but coalition forces were not directly involved in the counterattack. Their contribution was limited to aerial surveillance to assist the ISF.

“Coalition forces were several kilometers from the attack and at no stage where they under direct threat from this action,” CJTF-OIR said in the statement.

Hawke said the militants are believed to have been on a suicide mission, but she did not know what types of weapons they used.

This isn’t the first time that Al Asad has come under insurgent attack. For months, the Islamic State has been regularly launching small-scale rocket and mortar attacks on the facility.

The base “has been subjected to ineffective indirect fires … on average several times per week for several months now,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters Thursday before the attack that breached the perimeter occurred. “Al Asad is a large and sprawling base. Thus far, none of the indirect fire attacks that have been launched against it have had any impact at all — no American casualties, no American equipment damaged.”

There are about 400 American troops at Al Asad training and advising ISF forces, who are battling the Islamic State in Anbar and across Iraq. President Barack Obama has ruled out sending American ground forces into combat in Iraq, and the administration’s strategy for defeating the Islamic State relies heavily on local forces to retake captured territory.

The U.S. military plans to train nine ISF brigades and three peshmerga brigades. Iraqi forces are expected to launch major offensives to retake key terrain, perhaps as early as this spring.

There are about 2,600 total U.S. troops in Iraq.

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