50,000 17,000 | Date 23 February 1917 | |
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under 1,000 casualties more than 3,000 casualties Result British and Indian victory Combatants Ottoman Empire, United Kingdom, British Raj Similar World War I, Samarrah Offensive, Fall of Baghdad, Battle of Dujaila, Battle of Ctesiphon | ||
The Second Battle of Kut was fought on 23 February 1917, between British and Ottoman forces at Kut, Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).
The battle was part of the British advance to Baghdad begun in December 1916 by a 50,000-man British force (mainly from British India) organised in two army corps.
The British, led by Frederick Stanley Maude, recaptured the city, but the Ottoman garrison there did not get trapped inside (as had happened to Townshend's troops in the previous year when the Ottomans had besieged Kut in the Siege of Kut): the Ottoman commander, Kâzım Karabekir Bey, managed a good-order retreat from the town of his remaining soldiers (about 2,500), pursued by a British fluvial flotilla along the Tigris River.
The British advance wore off on 27 February at Aziziyeh, some 100 kilometers (62 mi) beyond Kut. After three days' worth of supplies had been accumulated, Maude continued his march toward Baghdad.