Second Battle of Kut

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Situation at Kut on February 22, 1917.

Date	February 23, 1917
Location	Kut, present-day Iraq
Result	British victory.

Belligerents

British Empire

Ottoman Empire

Commanders

Frederick Maude

Karabekir Bey

Strength

50,000

25,000

Casualties and losses

v • d • e Mesopotamian Campaign

Fao Landing – Basra – Qurna – Es Sinn – Ctesiphon – Umm-at-Tubal –1st Kut –Shiekh Sa'ad – Wadi – Hanna – Dujaila – 2nd Kut – Baghdad – Samarrah Offensive – Jebel Hamlin – Istabulat – Ramadi – Khan Baghdadi – Sharqat

The Second Battle of Kut was fought on February 23, 1917, between British and Ottoman forces.

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) organized 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 Turkish commander, 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 February 27 at Aziziyeh, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) beyond Kut. After three days' worth of supplies had been accumulated, Maude continued his march toward Baghdad.