Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said that initial reports today showed that all of the IS attackers were killed by Iraqi troops at or inside a gate to al-Asad air base in the western province of Anbar.
There are about 400 US troops at the base, but Warren said none of the American forces were involved in the fighting. He said the US troops were about two miles (three kilometers) away, in a different section of the sprawling air base.
There are currently nearly 2,600 US forces in Iraq. Of those, about 450 are training Iraqi troops at three bases across the country, including al-Asad. Forces from other coalition countries conduct the training at the fourth site, in the northern city of Irbil.