ISIS Nears Anbar Base Where US Troops Are Stationed

Anbar Officials: Town of Baghdadi Overrun

Provincial officials in the Anbar Province, which if anyone is keeping track is about 80% under the control of ISIS, have warned that ISIS is making more gains, overrunning the town of Bagdadi as of Thursday morning.

That’s a bigger problem than most towns being lost, as it puts ISIS forces less than five miles away from Ayn al-Assad air base, where some 320 US ground troops are stationed as “advisers.”

When the US first put troops in Anbar, it set up a lot of red flags, with many warning it wouldn’t be long before those troops found themselves on the front-lines of the war and entering direct combat. It seems that time is getting extremely close.

Pentagon officials confirmed the loss of Baghdadi, but said that so far there were only reports of “ineffective indirect fire” in the area around the base. That fire is likely to get much less indirect as ISIS gets its artillery into the area close to the base.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.