US troops starting training and rebuilding two Iraqi army units

About 320 US Marines are training members of the Iraqi 7th Division at Ain al-Asad air base in western al Anbar province, while it takes regular harassing mortar fire from Islamic State militants, said Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. The training began on Dec. 20. Another 170 U.S. troops, soldiers of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, began a six-week training course for four battalions of Iraqi security forces on Dec. 27 in Taji, a predominantly Sunni rural area north of Baghdad. 

The Iraqi Army is being remolded as a force able to take the offensive against the ISIS which overran part of Iraq last year.