A contingent of 140 troops arrived Sunday in Kuwait as the first batch of replacements for the Ground Self-Defense Force in southern Iraq, the Defense Agency said.
The troops will spend a few days at a U.S. camp in Kuwait to undergo firearms training and acclimatize themselves to the heat before heading to Samawah, southern Iraq, as early as the middle of this month, the agency said.
The contingent, which arrived at the Kuwaiti Abdullah Al-Mubarak Air Base on a government plane, is the first of three batches of replacement troops to be sent this month to Iraq. It left Japan on Saturday.
It will be the first rotation of troops since a GSDF advance team arrived in Samawah in mid-January.