The US military’s top officer flies to Iraq on Tuesday to review plans for a troop withdrawal and efforts to form a new governing coalition, amid fresh violence targeting civilians.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was due in Baghdad after a two-day visit to Afghanistan, where he checked on the progress in the nearly nine-year-old war. His visit to Iraq comes after twin car bombs killed 21 people on Monday in the southern Shia holy city of Karbala, while four people died in a suicide attack on a Saudi-funded television channel in Baghdad.
There are currently 77,500 US soldiers in Iraq but all combat troops are due out by September 1, leaving a training and advisory force of 50,000 behind, which is itself scheduled to withdraw by December 2011.