US to send long-range artillery to Turkey against Daesh

By Kasim Ileri

WASHINGTON

The Pentagon will deploy long-range mobile artillery systems to Turkey to challenge Daesh’s rockets launched into that country’s southern cities, a U.S. general said Tuesday.

“I will tell you that is a recent development that we have been working on and we are looking at how it's going to be installed and, we're working very closely with our strong partners in Turkey to find out exactly how it's going to operate,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, deputy commander for the anti-Daesh coalition, said during a video conference from Baghdad.

Gersten said the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to be deployed would be at a “brigade-level," referring to the level of a commanding authority for a group of troops and equipment.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who first announced the HIMARS deployment on Monday, said the systems will be deployed in May and that NATO allies hope to assist moderate Syrian opposition groups on the ground in using the equipment.

According to Turkish authorities, 45 rocket rounds have landed in the southern Turkish city of Kilis since January and has killed 16 victims and wounded 62 others. On Sunday, five rockets hit Kilis killing one person and injuring 26, Turkish officials said.

The U.S. also has HIMARS in Jordan and in the Iraqi province of Anbar as well as the Tigris River valley.

Gersten said that the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria has plummeted in the past year.

He said when he arrived in Baghdad about a year ago, up to 1,500 to 2,000 foreign fighters were joining Daesh each month.

"Now we have been fighting this enemy for a year, our estimates are down to 200 [per month] and we are actually seeing now an increase in desertion rates of these fighters," Gersten said.

Noting the coalition’s efforts to mitigate civilian casualties, the general said a U.S. Hellfire missile recently struck the house of a Daesh leader in southern Mosul. The strike on the house, which was also used for storing cash, resulted in the deaths of a woman and several children despite all the precautions taken, according to Gersten.

An estimated $150 million was stored in the house, he said, but he did not disclose the name of the leader who was allegedly “the major distributor of funds to Daesh fighters.”

The militant did not emerge from the building following the strike but Gersten could not confirm whether he was killed.