The US-led international coalition forces withdrew from the Taji military base north of Baghdad this morning, and handed it over to the Iraqi security forces, days after US President Donald Trump renewed his pledge to withdraw the small remaining number of his country's soldiers from Iraq.
The spokesman for the joint operations of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, Major General Tahsin Al-Khafaji, said in a press statement today that "the international coalition forces today handed over the site No. 8 to the Taji camp to the Iraqi forces, which was used to train, equip and rehabilitate Iraqi cadres by the Australian, New Zealand and American forces."
He stated that "the site will be designated for the Iraqi security forces to use after the completion of the mission of the international coalition forces," explaining that "the other sites will be handed over to the Iraqi side according to a timetable for delivery."
The Taji camp site is the eighth site received from the coalition forces, after military sites and bases in Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk and Anbar months ago.
The Taji website and other coalition bases have been subjected to a series of attacks over recent months, with Washington accusing the Iraqi "Hezbollah" brigades and other factions close to Iran of being behind them.
And following the missile attacks, the US forces withdrew from several military sites and bases throughout Iraq over the past months, as part of the repositioning.
The United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq, and the coalition has 2,500 more.
Timetable
In a related context, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said that the redeployment of US forces in his country will take place according to a timetable.
Hussein A., who accompanied Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi on his visit to Washington, in statements carried by the Iraqi News Agency last night, indicated that there is an agreement with Washington that the issue of rescheduling the deployment by specialists and technicians from both sides to study this issue and approve the timetable for that .
No details were released from Washington about the redeployment of US forces, but US President Donald Trump announced Thursday during a meeting with Al-Kazemi in Washington his commitment to the rapid exit of the international coalition forces from Iraq within 3 years.
Last January, the Iraqi parliament voted on a resolution calling on the government to end the foreign military presence in the country, against the backdrop of the killing of the Iranian Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Authority, in a US air strike near Baghdad airport.
On Saturday, Al-Kazemi ended his official visit to Washington, after 4 days of meetings and discussions with US administration officials, led by President Donald Trump.
In 2014, about 5,000 American soldiers deployed to military bases across Iraq as part of the international coalition to fight the Islamic State, and there is no recent statistics on the number of these forces now.
The American forces returned to Iraq in 2014 when ISIS invaded a third of the area of Iraq, at the request of the Baghdad government headed by Nuri al-Maliki at the time.
The American forces completely left Iraq at the end of 2011, 8 years after the invasion that toppled the regime of the late President Saddam Hussein in 2003.