WASHINGTON, April 9: Some 13,000 National Guard troops had been alerted that they were likely to deploy to Iraq from the end of this year, the Pentagon said on Monday in its latest move to staff the war with a stretched-thin military.

The four brigades of part-time soldiers would take over from units currently in Iraq when their tours of duty end, and some might go back sooner than their usual break between tours, the Pentagon said.

Strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has called on reservists to help it fight and has been unable to stick to its goals on the amount of time troops get to spend at home between deployments.

A Pentagon spokesman said that some of the Guard soldiers, part of the US military’s reserve component, might face deployment well before the target of five years at home for every year they are mobilised.

But the spokesman said some two-thirds of the soldiers had not previously been deployed.

“These reserve units are not scheduled to begin deployment until December 2007. They are receiving alert orders now in order to provide them the maximum time to complete their preparations,” a Pentagon statement said.—Reuters