BAGHDAD – Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of U.S. forces from the country in reaction to the American drone attack that killed a top Iranian general, raising the prospect of a troop withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the Islamic State group and allow a resurgence of the extremists. Lawmakers approved a resolution asking the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which Washington sent troops more than four years ago to help fight ISIS. The bill is nonbinding and subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister. But the vote was another sign of the blowback from the U.S. airstrike Friday that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and a number of top Iraqi officials at the Baghdad airport. Soleimani was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

WASHINGTON – The imminent fall of the Islamic State's de facto capital leaves America a multitude of tasks to restore stability in the Middle East, starting with pockets of remaining IS resistance in Syria and Iraq. Then there are the more deeply rooted problems, not fixable by guns or bombs, that allowed extremism to rise and flourish: Syria's civil war and Iraq's intractable political, religious and ethnic disputes, which turned violent again this week. The challenge is more than the U.S. can handle alone. It likely will keep some troops in Iraq for years to come to train and advise the army, police and other members of security forces that imploded when IS fighters swept across the Syrian border and captured Mosul in June 2014. The militants also have footholds in Afghanistan and beyond.

Wooden propellers lie on a stripped-down drone, among tyres and gas canisters. Elsewhere, a four-wheeled contraption stands silent, preparing for its deadly mission. As the battle for Mosul rages on, Iraqi forces recently discovered this ISIS factory which has been making various death machines - from aerial drones to multi-wheeled robot bombs. The crude hardware was unearthed in a warehouse in the Al-Shifa neighbourhood on the fringes of the Islamic State-occupied Old City. Working with whatever they can salvage, the jihadis have been retrofitting hobby drones with explosives and, in some cases, building devices from metal pipes and repurposed small engines - including from motorbikes.

On January 22nd, two days after President Trump was inaugurated, he received a memo from his new Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, recommending that the United States launch a military strike in Yemen. In a forty-year career, Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general and a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, had cultivated a reputation for being both deeply thoughtful and extremely aggressive. By law and by custom, the position of Defense Secretary is reserved for civilians, but Mattis was still a marine at heart. He had been out of the military for only three years (the rule is seven), and his appointment required Congress to pass a waiver. For the first time in his professional life, he was going to the Pentagon in a suit and tie. Mattis urged Trump to launch the raid swiftly: the operation, which was aimed at one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen, required a moonless night, and the window for action was approaching. Under previous Administrations, such attacks entailed ...

SOUTH OF MOSUL, IRAQ – Closely supported by the U.S.-led international coalition, Iraqi forces secured a series of cautious advances on Thursday, pushing into a sprawling military base outside of Mosul and onto the grounds of the city's airport, where they took control of the runway. The three-pronged attack began just after sunrise, with three convoys of Iraqi forces snaking north across Nineveh's hilly desert on Mosul's southern approach. Iraq's special forces joined federal police and rapid response units in the push -- part of a major assault that started earlier this week to drive IS from the western half of Iraq's second-largest city. By afternoon they had entered the Ghazlani military base south of the city, as well as the airport. Iraqi helicopters circled above Mosul firing down onto the city's southwestern edge. Coalition and Iraqi airstrikes that hit targets inside Mosul sent plumes of white smoke into the air on the horizon.

WASHINGTON – Islamic State jihadis are using small commercial drones to attack Iraqi security forces in the battle for Mosul, a U.S. commander said Wednesday. Col. Brett Sylvia, who commands an "advise and assist" U.S. unit in Iraq, said IS fighters are attaching small munitions to quadcopters in an attempt to kill local forces as they retake Mosul, the last major IS bastion in Iraq. "They are small drones with small munitions that they've been dropping," Sylvia said. While the munitions were no larger than "a small little grenade," he said, that was enough to do what "Daesh does, and that's just, you know, indiscriminate killing," he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. The group's use of small drones is not new, Sylvia said, though initially they were mainly used for reconnaissance.

MOSUL, IRAQ/SALAHIYAH IRAQ – Iraq's special forces worked Sunday to clear neighborhoods on the eastern edge of Islamic State-held Mosul as bombings launched by the extremist group elsewhere in the country killed at least 20 people. The Mosul offensive has slowed in recent days as Iraqi forces have pushed into more densely populated areas, where they cannot rely as much on airstrikes and shelling because of the risk posed to civilians, who have been told to stay in their homes. "There are a lot of civilians and we are trying to protect them," said Lt. Col. Muhanad al-Timimi. "This is one of the hardest battles that we've faced till now." Some civilians are fleeing the combat zone, while IS militants are holding others back for use as human shields, making it harder for Iraqi commanders on the ground to get approval for requested U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.

U .S. military officers watched grainy video feeds at a small operations center in Baghdad on Tuesday as Predator drones tracked and killed three reputed Islamic State leaders -- one after another -- in the offensive on Mosul. The targeted air strikes were due in large part to intelligence extracted from cellphones, computer hard drives, memory cards and hand-written ledgers recovered from battlefields and towns taken from Islamic State fighters. Recently captured intelligence also has proved useful in providing clues to detecting potential terrorist plots, tracking foreign fighters and identifying Islamic State supporters around the globe, U.S. officials said. The largest data trove was recovered when U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces recaptured Manbij, an Islamic State stronghold in northern Syria, in mid-August. Intelligence agencies recovered more than 120,000 documents, nearly 1,200 devices and more than 20 terabytes of digital information, officials said. Islamic State militants came early in the morning, riding atop trucks that lumbered into this northern Iraqi oil town.

An explosive-laden drone, sent by the Islamic State group (ISIS), was intercepted and shot by Kurdish forces in Iraq early this month, according to reports Tuesday. However, the drone blew up and killed two Kurdish fighters and injured two French soldiers. The incident reportedly happened on Oct. 2 in Erbil, which serves as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where French troops have been fighting along with Kurdish fighters against ISIS, according to the New York Times and French newspaper Le Monde. Neither Iraqi officials nor French authorities have confirmed the incident. About 500 French military personnel have been deployed in Iraq to fight ISIS. They include special forces who are training Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the northern part of the country.

A new remotely controlled war machine for the Iraqi Security Forces. Mosul wasn't supposed to fall again. The city in Northern Iraq saw intense fighting between American forces and Saddam Hussein's sons in 2003, and in 2008 saw major campaign by American troops against insurgent forces. When ISIS attacked Mosul in summer 2014, two divisions of the Iraqi Security Forces were supposed to hold the city, but the 30,000 defenders crumbled and fled from the onslaught of under 2,000 enemies. Mosul remains in ISIS' hands today.