2nd Combat Death of US Military in Islamic State Fight.

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A U.S. Marine was killed near the front line with the Islamic State in northern Iraq on Saturday, becoming the second combat casualty of the war against the militants, according to the U.S. military and Iraqi officials.

The Marine died when Islamic State militants fired two rockets into a small U.S. base in Makhmour, a front-line town controlled by Kurdish peshmerga forces on the outskirts of the region of Kurdistan, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

"Several" other Marines also were injured in the rocket attack, according to a Pentagon statement. An earlier statement by the military had not specified which branch of the military the U.S. service member who died had belonged to.

A senior Iraqi army officer in Makhmour said the rockets landed about 8:20 a.m. on Saturday on the American camp, a small, closely guarded facility where U.S. advisers have been based for several months helping Iraqi army and peshmerga forces battle Islamic State fighters nearby and preparing for an offensive to recapture the major Iraqi city of Mosul, which the Islamic State has controlled since June 2014.

The American base lies within a larger peshmerga base and next to an Iraqi army base on the outskirts of Makhmour, south of the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil. The town was briefly seized by the Islamic State in 2014 then recaptured after U.S. airstrikes were launched.

Makhmour is expected to become a major focus of any offensive to gain control of Mosul, and Iraqi army reinforcements have begun arriving there in recent weeks in preparation for the operation. The Iraqi officer said mortars frequently target the Iraqi army base there, and it was unclear whether the rounds that killed the Marine on Saturday were deliberately targeting the U.S. base or had been aimed at the Iraqi army.

The town is administered by the Kurdistan Regional Government, but Baghdad claims it is part of Iraq.

On Wednesday, Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy to the coalition formed to fight the Islamic State, declined to predict when the offensive might take place, but he said it had effectively already begun, with operations elsewhere aimed at severing supply routes and isolating the city. "It's already started. ... It's a slow steady squeeze," he told a forum at the American University of Iraq at Sulaymaniyah that was held to discuss Iraq's future.

He indicated that the launch of a full-scale offensive may yet take time. "It's going to be a long campaign," he said. "Mosul, that will be one of the biggest tests."

The first U.S. combat casualty in the 19-month-old campaign against the Islamic State came in October, during a Special Operations raid to free Islamic State prisoners in the northern Iraqi town of Hawijah. The military identified the soldier in that incident as Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler, 39, of Roland, Okla.

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U.S. Marine Louis Cardin was killed in a rocket attack by the Islamic State group, the Pentagon said. (Vince Cardin)
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On Sunday, the Pentagon identified the slain Marine as Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, of Temecula, California. Cardin was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the Pentagon said.

The base is where the U.S. has been conducting advise-and-assist activities as part of the coalition effort against ISIS, a U.S. official told CNN.

The existence of the firebase had not previously been made public and the Pentagon had planned to acknowledge the firebase this week, a defense official told CNN.

The rugged location for now has a “couple of hundred” Marines living in tents near Makhmour in northern Iraq. It’s assumed ISIS observed the Marines moving into the area and saw them firing practice rounds with their howitzers, the official said.

Iraqi General Sirwan Barzani told CNN that the attack occurred around 9:30 a.m. local time.

Barzani added that his men in Makhmour are receiving rocket fire daily and some attacks have claimed Iraqi soldiers and Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

The last U.S. service member to be killed in Iraq as a result of hostile enemy action was Army Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler, of Roland, Oklahoma, who died in October during a rescue mission in northern Iraq. Wheeler was the first American to die in combat in Iraq since November 2011.

Sunday marks the 13th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

R.I.P. Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin