The Iraqi military has been assured that the Obama administration is rushing 1,000 antitank rockets to the region to help combat the Islamic State group.
The new weapons are expected to arrive sometime in early June, The New York Times reported Wednesday. A request for the heavy weapons was made by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi during his visit to Washington in April.
News of the shipment comes only days after the fall of Ramadi to the Sunni radical terror group. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that “dozens of U.S. military vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces” were seized by Islamic State after Iraqi security forces fled.
“You’d have to be delusional not to take something like this and say, what went wrong and how do you fix it? This is an extremely serious situation,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, The Times reported.
The offensive that led to the fall of Ramadi included 30 car bombs, 10 of which were likened to blasts from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
“Nobody is kidding themselves about what [the Islamic State] was able to pull off last week. We’re still trying to piece together exactly what happened there,” the State Department official said, The Times reported.
SEE ALSO: Islamic State took U.S.-supplied tanks, vehicles after Iraqi forces fled Ramadi
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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