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WASHINGTON US military operations inIraq, including airstrikes and surveillance flights, have cost about $560millionsince mid-June, the Pentagon said Friday.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the average daily cost has been $7.5million. He said it began at a much lower rate in June and escalated after the airstrikes in northernIraqbegan this month.

After he spoke, the US Central Command announced four additional airstrikes, bringing the total since they began on Aug. 8 to 110. Central Command said Friday's missions by US fighter and attack aircraft destroyed four armed vehicles and three support vehicles in the vicinity of the Mosul Dam. One armed vehicle was damaged, it said without providing more details.

Asked why US warplanes are still pounding the Mosul Dam area, long after US officials said local Kurdish and Iraqi forces had regained control from the Islamic State forces, Kirby said, "Because ISIL keeps wanting to take it back," using an acronym for the group.

"They keep threatening the dam and the facility. And as long as they pose a threat to that facility, we are going to continue to help Iraqi security forces preserve their ownership of it," he added.

The Pentagon also has security forces in Baghdad and Irbil to protect American personnel and facilities, and teams of US troops are in those two cities to coordinate with Iraqi and Kurdish forces and to assess the strengths and tactics of Islamic State forces.

Kirby said the costs are being paid from the Pentagon's 2014 overseas contingency fund. Top Pentagon officials have said they have adequate funds for the operation through September but that requests to Congress for the next budget year might have to be reconsidered if theIraqoperations intensify further.

The White House also is considering whether to extend the military campaign to include Islamic State targets inside Syria, but President Barack Obama said Thursday there was no immediate strategy to do that and played down expectations that it would happen immediately.

In a show of support forIraq'sfledgling government, Vice President Joe Biden calledIraq'spremier-designate, Haider al-Abadi, on Friday and told him that political progress inIraqhas played a key role in rallying global support forIraq'sfight against the Islamic State militants. The White House said the two leaders discussed security cooperation between the US andIraqas well as the need to quickly form a government inclusive ofIraq'svarious sectarian groups.

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Iraq operations cost $7.5 million per day, says Pentagon (+video)

WASHINGTON US military operations inIraq, including airstrikes and surveillance flights, have cost about $560millionsince mid-June, the Pentagon said Friday.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the average daily cost has been $7.5million. He said it began at a much lower rate in June and escalated after the airstrikes in northernIraqbegan this month.

After he spoke, the US Central Command announced four additional airstrikes, bringing the total since they began on Aug. 8 to 110. Central Command said Friday's missions by US fighter and attack aircraft destroyed four armed vehicles and three support vehicles in the vicinity of the Mosul Dam. One armed vehicle was damaged, it said without providing more details.

Asked why US warplanes are still pounding the Mosul Dam area, long after US officials said local Kurdish and Iraqi forces had regained control from the Islamic State forces, Kirby said, "Because ISIL keeps wanting to take it back," using an acronym for the group.

"They keep threatening the dam and the facility. And as long as they pose a threat to that facility, we are going to continue to help Iraqi security forces preserve their ownership of it," he added.

The Pentagon also has security forces in Baghdad and Irbil to protect American personnel and facilities, and teams of US troops are in those two cities to coordinate with Iraqi and Kurdish forces and to assess the strengths and tactics of Islamic State forces.

Kirby said the costs are being paid from the Pentagon's 2014 overseas contingency fund. Top Pentagon officials have said they have adequate funds for the operation through September but that requests to Congress for the next budget year might have to be reconsidered if theIraqoperations intensify further.

The White House also is considering whether to extend the military campaign to include Islamic State targets inside Syria, but President Barack Obama said Thursday there was no immediate strategy to do that and played down expectations that it would happen immediately.

In a show of support forIraq'sfledgling government, Vice President Joe Biden calledIraq'spremier-designate, Haider al-Abadi, on Friday and told him that political progress inIraqhas played a key role in rallying global support forIraq'sfight against the Islamic State militants. The White House said the two leaders discussed security cooperation between the US andIraqas well as the need to quickly form a government inclusive ofIraq'svarious sectarian groups.

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Iraq operations cost $7.5 million per day, says Pentagon

AFP West drops aid to Iraq town under jihadist siege

Kirkuk (Iraq) (AFP) - Western warplanes dropped desperately needed aid on Sunday to an Iraqi Shiite town under blockade by jihadists for well over two months as preparations to break the siege dragged on.

The aid drops were accompanied by US air strikes and were the furthest south that US forces have intervened in Iraq, barring reconnaissance flights, since their withdrawal in December 2011.

The mainly Turkmen residents of the Salaheddin province town of Amerli, where the United Nations has warned of the risk of sectarian massacre by the besieging Sunni Arab extremists, have been running desperately short of food and medicines.

Thousands of Shiite militiamen and Kurdish fighters have been massing for days for an operation to break the siege, alongside the Iraqi army, which was left in disarray by the lightning offensive the jihadists launched in second city Mosul in early June.

Washington launched air strikes in support of Kurdish forces in northern Iraq on August 8.

But it has so far been reluctant to expand its operations amid Pentagon warnings that military intervention alongside Baghdad government forces risks further alienating Sunni Arabs without more strenuous efforts by the Shiite-led administration to engage the disenchanted minority community.

Shiite militia and Kurdish forces closed on the besieged enclave on Sunday, reaching within five kilometres (three miles) of the forces inside it, militia commander Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati said.

A roadside bomb south of the town killed four militiamen, officers said.

Australian, British, French and US aircraft dropped relief supplies to the thousands of civilians trapped in the enclave.

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Iraq launches drive to break jihadist siege of Amerli

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