Following the killing of a U.S. Navy SEAL in Iraq during an attack by the Islamic militant group – Isis, the United States gathered defense ministers from 11 other countries for talks to find out ways to strengthen the campaign against Islamic State.

Despite recent gains “this fight is far from over” said the U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter to the defense ministers.

“That point was brought into stark relief by yesterday’s attack on Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq, which unfortunately claimed the life of an American service member,” Carter said, speaking at the start of talks at the U.S. military’s European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

The talks were planned well in advance of Tuesday’s news that a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in northern Iraq when Islamic State fighters blasted through Kurdish defenses and overran a town and included ministers from France, Britain and Germany.

Since a U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State, the elite serviceman was the third American to be killed in direct combat and it also denoted the measure to which the US has gone deep and got involvement in the conflict.

With the aim of putting them closer to the front lines of battle to advise Iraqi forces in the war against the militant group, the United States announced plans to send an additional 200 troops to Iraq in mid-April.

Resulting in a great expansion of the U.S. presence on the ground there to help draw in more Syrian fighters to combat Islamic State, in late April, President Barack Obama announced he would send an additional 250 special operations forces to Syria.

Obama’s critics have said the gradual steps are still insufficient.

Even as Carter expressed confidence the campaign would ultimately succeed, he said that the U.S.-led coalition needed to look for opportunities to do more.

“With your help, it will go faster,” he said.

Since the time the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi in December, the largest city in the western region, the Islamist militants have been broadly retreating. Pushing the militants further north along the Euphrates valley, last month, the Iraqi army retook the nearby region of Hit.

But U.S. officials acknowledge that the military gains are not enough.

Perturbed by the Shi’ite Muslim-led government’s fitful efforts to seek reconciliation with aggrieved minority Sunnis, the bedrock of Islamic State support, Iraq is beset by political infighting, corruption, a growing fiscal crisis.

(Adapted from Reuters)