The United States is sending more Marines to Iraq after an ISIS rocket killed a U.S. Marine and injured several others, the U.S.-led coalition said Sunday.
The coalition said in a brief statement that a detachment from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, was being sent after "consultation with the government of Iraq." The 26th MEU is working in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.
The number of Marines being sent wasn't disclosed.
The announcement comes after the Defense Department confirmed that Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, 27, of Temecula, California, died Saturday after his unit was attacked with an ISIS rocket at a small outpost near Mahmour, south of Mosul.
Cardin, who was assigned to the 26th MEU, was the first U.S. service member to have been killed in Iraq since October.
Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday declared atrocities committed by ISIS against religious minorities in the Middle East to be genocide, only the second time the executive branch has used the word in relation to an ongoing conflict.
"Naming these crimes is important, but what is essential is to stop them," Kerry said Thursday.
