Four thousand Kurdish pershmerga troops advanced on villages east of Mosul, marking the start of operations to take back Iraq’s second-largest city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State (BBC)
The campaign is expected to involve up to thirty thousand Iraqi forces backed by U.S. warplanes and special forces
United States to Send Additional Six Hundred Troops to Iraq
U.S. President Barack Obama authorized an additional six hundred U.S. troops to assist Iraqi forces in an offensive to retake the city of Mosul from the self-proclaimed Islamic State (NYT)
Iraqi Counternarcotics Efforts
The Iraqi Ministry of Interior announced that its forces have dismantled more than 1,200 drug networks in the past three years, arresting thousands of traffickers, as the country continues battling an extensive illegal drug trade (Facebook)