The Pentagon will send thousands more Marines to Iraq in early 2004, bolstering the next wave of US troops being deployed amid an increasingly bloody guerrilla war.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has directed the Marine Corps to send three additional battalions, along with assorted support units, to Iraq as part of the troop rotation plan for early 2004.
Officials portrayed the decision as a fine-tuning of a previously announced troop rotation plan and not a reaction to the difficult security situation.
They said the exact number of Marines involved had not yet been determined. Officials said the Marines in the three battalions would number roughly between 2,700 and 2,800, and the support units attached to the battalions will push the total number of Marines involved even higher.
Earlier this month Pentagon planners said the United States envisioned 105,000 troops in Iraq next May - down from the current 130,000.