STUTTGART, Germany—The combat death of an American Navy SEAL in Iraq shows that despite recent gains against the Islamic State in Iraq, “this fight is far from over,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday.
Carter spoke at the outset of a closed-door meeting in Germany with his counterparts from 11 countries contributing to the military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. They convened at the headquarters of U.S. European Command, where Carter was presiding at a change-of-command ceremony Tuesday when news of the U.S. battlefield death reached him.
Carter was huddling Wednesday with his coalition partners to discuss “what more we can do” to accelerate the military campaign in both Iraq and Syria. It was a follow-up to a similar session he led in Brussels in mid-February.
“While we have gathered momentum since our ministerial in Brussels, this fight is far from over,” Carter said. “That point was brought into stark relief by yesterday’s attack on Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq, which unfortunately claimed the life of an American service member.”
