President Barack Obama appears poised to approve the deployment of hundreds more US training personnel to Iraq, as a part of the fight against the Takfiri group, ISIL.

President Barack Obama appears poised to approve the deployment of hundreds more US training personnel to Iraq, as a part of the fight against the Takfiri group, ISIL.

Officials said Obama is considering authorizing an increase of under 500 troops to boost the capacity of the Iraqi army and Sunni tribal fighters.

"We are considering a range of options to accelerate the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces," National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey told AFP.

"Those options include sending additional trainers to Iraq."

Recent ISIL’s gains in Ramadi in Iraq and Syria's Palmyra have thrown into doubt Obama's strategy of depending on US airpower and Iraqi ground forces to win the war.

But in response, the Pentagon has drawn up plans to augment an existing mission rather than forge a new approach.

"We've determined it is better to train more Iraqi security forces," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said.

"Because the forces we've trained are performing better than expected, we feel it's in everyone's interest to train more."

The current US mission comprises roughly 3,000 advisers and trainers.
A larger deployment could mean increasing the number of training sites from the four currently being used, one official said.

The training effort would carry "a particular emphasis on the Sunnis," the official added.

The US is leading an international coalition to counter ISIL. The coalition has been for more than a year staging airstrikes against the Takfiri group’s positions in Iraq and Syria.

Earlier last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi accused partners of the international coalition of not doing enough to counter the terrorist group.

Iraq "needs all the support of the world" to counter the Takfiris’ advance, but "we are not getting much. I think this is a failure on the part of the world... There is a lot of talk of support for Iraq, there is very little on the ground," Abadi said last week.