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U.S., Arab Allies Strike IS Jihadists In Syria

U.S., Arab Allies Strike IS Jihadists In Syria

Damascus (AFP) — The United States and its Arab allies unleashed deadly bomb and missile strikes on jihadists in Syria on Tuesday, opening a new front in the battle against the Islamic State group.

Dozens of IS and Al-Qaeda militants were reported to have been killed in the raids, which Washington said had partly targeted extremists plotting an “imminent attack” against the West.

Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S.-led operation, which involved fighter jets, bombers, drones and Tomahawk missiles fired from U.S. warships.

The strikes marked a turning point in the war against IS militants, who have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, and declared an Islamic “caliphate”.

The fact that the five Arab nations joining the strikes are Sunni-ruled will also be of crucial symbolic importance in the fight against the Sunni extremists of IS.

Washington had been reluctant to intervene in Syria’s raging civil war, but was jolted into action as the jihadists captured more territory and committed atrocities including the beheadings of three Western hostages.

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime gave a muted initial response, saying it had been notified in advance of the strikes and supported “any international effort” against the jihadists.

The Pentagon said the raids had destroyed or damaged IS fighter positions, training compounds, command centers and armed vehicles in the jihadist stronghold of Raqa and near the border with Iraq.

– ‘Huge impact’ –

An anti-regime activist in Raqa, Abu Yusef, said that IS had redeployed its fighters in response.

“The impact of the strikes has been huge,” he told AFP via the Internet.

The jihadists “are focused on trying to save themselves now,” he added.

The raids prompted many residents to run from their homes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

“Civilians who live near IS positions across Syria have fled,” director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

It follows a recent exodus of tens of thousands of residents into neighboring Turkey in response to a jihadist assault on a strategic Kurdish town in northern Syria.

IS militants have warned the U.S.-led campaign would be met with a harsh response, and an IS-linked Algerian group on Monday threatened to kill a French hostage within 24 hours if Paris did not end its participation in air strikes in Iraq.

The group said it was responding to an IS call to kill Westerners whose nations are among 50 countries that have joined the campaign to battle the jihadist group.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls ruled out negotiation and said Paris would continue its air strikes.

-‘Al-Qaeda plot’ –

Washington said it launched 14 strikes — including 47 Tomahawk missiles — against IS targets around the jihadist stronghold of Raqa, as well as in Deir Ezzor, Albu Kamal and Hasakeh on the border with Iraq.

Its five Arab allies “participated in or supported” the attacks. Jordan and Bahrain said they deployed warplanes.

Four air strikes were also conducted Monday in neighboring Iraq, the Pentagon said, bringing the total number of U.S. raids in that country to 194.

In Syria, eight strikes were carried out on a group of “seasoned Al-Qaeda” veterans to disrupt “imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests”, the Pentagon said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 50 Al-Qaeda militants were killed, as well as more than 70 members of IS.

Eight civilians, including three children, were also among the dead, it said.

The new strikes came less than two weeks after U.S. President Barack Obama warned that he had approved an expansion of the campaign against the IS group to include action in Syria.

Obama was preparing to give his first public remarks on the raids from the White House at 10:00 am (1400 GMT) on Tuesday, a U.S. official said.

Washington has said the goal of the strikes is to degrade the group’s capabilities so it can be taken on by local ground forces including the Iraqi army and moderate Syrian rebels, who are to be trained and equipped by the coalition.

Syria’s opposition — which had pleaded for the strikes — welcomed the new raids, but urged sustained pressure on Assad’s government.

“This war cannot be won by military means alone,” National Coalition president Hadi al-Bahra said.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, Israel downed a Syrian fighter jet over the Golan Heights, indicating that it had crossed a ceasefire line into the Israeli-occupied sector.

Israeli army radio said it was apparently a MiG-21 which was shot down by a surface-to-air Patriot missile, with the wreckage landing on the Syrian-controlled side of the plateau.

AFP Photo/Mohammed al-Shaikh

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Jihadists Face Growing Pressure As U.S. Mulls Strategy

Jihadists Face Growing Pressure As U.S. Mulls Strategy

Baghdad (AFP) — Elite Iraqi troops backed by U.S. jets battled jihadists near Baghdad Wednesday as Washington devised a strategy for expanded operations against the Islamic State group.

President Barack Obama prepared to meet with U.S. commanders to decide how to turn the tide on the powerful and brutal extremist organisation while keeping a promise not to drag America into another military quagmire.

The White House scrambled to play down a suggestion that deploying ground forces was an option but expanded air strikes were already turning up the heat on Islamic State group fighters.

According to Iraqi military and tribal leaders, U.S. jets struck three IS targets in an area just south of Baghdad dubbed the “triangle of death”, killing at least four militants.

A leader of the Janabi tribe in the flashpoint region of Jurf al-Sakhr, less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad, said Iraqi soldiers had fought IS militants overnight until early Wednesday.

“The main focus was an area of Jurf al-Sakhr called Fadhiliya. They fought deep into the night but the Iraqi army was not able to enter the place,” he told AFP.

The U.S. military issued a statement late Tuesday that spoke of three air strikes southwest of Baghdad but did not specify where.

The Jurf al-Sakhr region is key because it sits on the Euphrates River between the major Sunni insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and the country’s most revered Shiite holy sites south of the capital.

– Ground forces? –

The tribal leader and an army lieutenant said the push was led by the Golden Brigade, which is widely recognized as the best force in the country.

Critics say it may be the only credible fighting force in what is sometimes derided as “a checkpoint army”.

The brigade, which spearheaded an offensive to retake the country’s largest dam north of Mosul last month, has been hopping from one key frontline to another.

The U.S. administration has said that its strategy in Iraq would involve helping to revamp an army it had not finished training when the eight-year occupation ended in 2011.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that US military advisers could “provide close-combat advising”.

But the White House insisted the idea of U.S. troops in battle was a “purely hypothetical scenario.”

The more than 160 air strikes launched by the U.S. since August 8 have achieved some results, apparently forcing top IS leaders to cross the border back into neighboring Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that nearly 50 people, including seven women and a child, had been killed since Monday in government air strikes on Talbisseh.

The town in the central Homs province has been under siege by the army ever since rebels seized it two year ago.

On Tuesday, Kurdish peshmerga forces — which have been receiving military equipment from Washington and some of its Western allies — retook seven Christian villages east of the second Iraqi city of Mosul with U.S. air support.

The villages had been emptied of their population during an IS offensive in August.

According to a senior Kurdish leader, Roj Nuri Shaways, a top IS military commander known as Abu Abdullah was killed in the fighting.

Calls have been mounting in Iraq for Washington to expand its air support to Sunni tribesmen fighting the jihadists, particularly in the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad.

– Global threat –

On Wednesday, Obama is to sit down with General Lloyd Austin, chief of U.S. Central Command, at his Florida headquarters.

The president will “discuss the plan for building an international coalition to degrade and destroy (IS),” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

British and French planes have already started surveillance missions over Iraq.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday that plans were being laid to hit targets in Syria, where the IS group is holding Western hostages and has a stronghold in the city of Raqa.

“This plan includes targeted actions against ISIL safe havens in Syria, including its command and control, logistics capabilities, and infrastructure,” he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group.

Over the past month, IS sparked global outrage by releasing video footage of the beheadings of two U.S. reporters and a British aid worker. It also warned it would take the battle to America and its allies.

A U.S. court on Tuesday indicted a Yemeni-born U.S. man for allegedly providing material support to IS by recruiting members for jihad in Syria.

Lawmakers in France — the top purveyor of Western jihadists — the same day approved a new anti-terror bill aimed at preventing potential jihadists from travelling to Iraq or Syria.

Six people, two of them minors, were arrested in the suburbs of the eastern city of Lyon on recruitment suspicions, a judicial source said Wednesday.

AFP Photo/Mohammed al-Shaikh

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