US forces mass in Gulf

The US military build-up has been relentless

By Nick Childs BBC Pentagon correspondent

The number of US military personnel in and around the Gulf has now risen to 113,000, the Pentagon has revealed.

In just a week, the number of US military personnel in and around the Gulf has swelled by some 26,000.

Some of that increase can be accounted for by the arrival in the Gulf of another aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its escorts.

There were two carriers already within striking distance of Iraq. A fourth, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, has also just completed its training off the East Coast of the United States and is now heading for the area.

Stealth fighters have also joined the build-up for the first time and there are now more than 50,000 American personnel in Kuwait alone, just across the border from Iraq.

The US build-up appears relentless, but one group of soldiers which has received deployment orders still has not moved.

The Pentagon would like the 19,000 troops of the Fourth Infantry Division in Texas to go to Turkey.

Pentagon planners still do not know if the Turks will let them in, but they are hopeful.

Nearly 17,000 reservists have also been mobilised in the last week, raising the number to more than 110,000 - but many of them will fill in behind active units which are heading for the Gulf, rather than heading for the region themselves.