Top US officer in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi leaders

The top US military officer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, arrived in Iraq's capital Baghdad Saturday on an unannounced visit to meet with Iraqi leaders over fighting against the Islamic State (IS) militant group, official television reported.

Gen. Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was due to discuss the campaign of the US-led coalition against the extremist IS group with the Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Xinhua reported citing the state-run Iraqiya channel.

Dempsey's visit comes about a week after President Barack Obama authorised the military to send up to 1,500 additional personnel to Iraq for training and assistance of Iraqi forces in the fight against the IS group.

The security situation in Iraq began to drastically deteriorate in the country June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and the IS group, who took control of the country's northern city of Mosul and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.

Earlier, the US sought to build a coalition of both world and regional countries to push back the IS's quick expansion. So far, the US-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes against the armed Islamist group in both Iraq and Syria.