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U.S. Army troop strength in Iraq will spike, at least briefly, as more troops are kept in the country as part of a major rotation in coming months, Pentagon officials said on Thursday.

Two US soldiers relax in the back of their Bradley fighting vehicle before going on a mission into Samarra. The United States said it will pour more troops into Iraq after another US soldier died in a roadside ambush.   [AFP]

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved what is expected to be a roughly 120-day deployment of units of the 82nd Airborne Division's First Brigade and a 60-day extension of the 82nd Airborne's Third Brigade, which is already in Iraq, senior military officials said.

"It's a spike, no doubt about it," a senior Pentagon official said. The decision to ratchet up troop strength came at the request of Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the war-fighting U.S. Central Command, military officials said.

The First Brigade units will beef up the force during a delay in the arrival of the 81st enhanced infantry brigade, an Army-National Guard unit from Washington state now being trained to perform at battalion level, not company level, as had originally been planned, the officials said.

A U.S. Army battalion is made up of three companies and contains about 3,500 troops.

On Nov. 6, the Pentagon announced plans to reduce U.S. forces in Iraq from 132,000 to 105,000 by next May while replacing ground troops currently there with fresh contingents of Army soldiers and Marines early next year.

Currently, about 123,000 U.S. forces are deployed in Iraq.

Abizaid's positioning of the existing U.S. force has created a "gap" that the extra troops will fill, one senior military official told reporters.

"The deployment of the First (brigade) of the 82nd is to provide for continuity within that gap period," he said.

Precise numbers were not immediately available but "a couple thousand" First Brigade troops will start to arrive on equipment already in Iraq around the first week of January, the officials said.

The Third Brigade, which had been due to wind up an originally scheduled six-month deployment in February, will stay in Iraq until the end of March or early April, they said.

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