The US-led coalition will not support Shia militia who might seek to participate in the campaign to retake Mosul from Islamic State and it is up to Baghdad to decide their role, a top US general told Pentagon reporters on Wednesday.
Top diplomatic and military officials from the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group met on Thursday to prepare the assault on its Iraqi bastion Mosul.
A US-led coalition has carried out at least 150 air strikes on the Islamic State group to back an offensive near the jihadists' northern Syria stronghold, a monitor said Friday.
Iraq's military said on Sunday it was preparing to launch an offensive to retake the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja and told residents to get ready to leave before fighting started.
Defence ministers from the US-led coalition against Islamic State discussed the possibility of a Syrian ground incursion two weeks ago in Brussels, but have not made a decision, an aide to Saudi Arabia's defence minister told Reuters on Monday.
The commander of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria on Monday dismissed calls to carpet- bomb the jihadists.
Islamic State's territory shrank by 40 percent from its maximum expansion in Iraq, and by 20 percent in Syria in 2015, as international forces pushed it out of several cities, the US-led coalition fighting it said on Tuesday.
