US to reduce the number of its troops in Iraq by nearly a third

Shafaq News / The Wall Street Journal reported, on Friday, that the United States will reduce the number of its troops in Iraq by nearly a third, according to American officials.

The newspaper quoted US officials saying that the Pentagon decided to reduce the number of US forces in Iraq to about 3,500 soldiers during the next three months.

That would bring US troop back to what they were in 2015 when the United States was in the first phase of its campaign against ISIS, according to the newspaper.

There are currently about 5,200 American soldiers in Iraq, who are deployed in several bases distributed over the governorates of Al-Anbar, Erbil, and the outskirts of the capital, Baghdad.