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U.S. Warplanes Target Militants In Iraq; Refugees Crowd Into Irbil

U.S. Warplanes Target Militants In Iraq; Refugees Crowd Into Irbil

By Kathleen Hennessey, David S. Cloud and Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times

IRBIL, Iraq — Two U.S. fighter jets bombed Sunni militant forces in northern Iraq on Friday morning, launching the first major U.S. military action in the country since combat troops left three years ago.

In a statement issued Friday morning, the Pentagon said two F/A-18 Hornets dropped laser-guided bombs on artillery that had fired on Kurdish forces near Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital. Militants of the Islamic State have been advancing toward the city, where thousands of Iraqis have sought sanctuary from the breakaway al-Qaida group.

The fighter jets dropped 500-pound bombs on a “mobile artillery piece,” being used by the militants, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman.

The attack occurred only hours after President Barack Obama announced he had authorized airstrikes to protect about 100 U.S. military advisers in Irbil and to halt the advance of the Islamist militants.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest would not provide a time frame for the bombing campaign, but he offered a “specific presidential commitment” that it would not be an extended period.

“The president is determined to make sure that the United States is not dragged back into a long military conflict in Iraq,” Earnest told reporters.

In addition to protecting U.S. personnel and assisting Iraqi religious refugees stranded on a mountaintop in northern Iraq, Earnest added a third justification for Obama’s decision to authorize limited airstrikes. The White House has been encouraged by Baghdad’s steps toward a more inclusive government, Earnest said, and believes that the U.S. attack on the Sunni insurgents supports that progress.

“It is, after all, in the clear national security interests of the United States for there to be a stable Iraqi government that can preside over a stable Iraq and a security force that has the necessary capability to address the security situation in that country,” Earnest said.

Kirby said the Islamic State “was using this artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Irbil, where U.S. personnel are located.”

“As the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take direct action against ISIL when they threaten our personnel and facilities,” Kirby said, referring to the militant group by an acronym for another of its names, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

He did not say if the artillery had been destroyed and said it wasn’t clear if militants had been killed in the strike.

The Islamic State is a radical Sunni armed force that has seized control of large swaths of Syria and northern and western Iraq. Its forces took control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, earlier this summer and have advanced in recent days toward the autonomous region controlled by the Kurds in the mountainous area northwest of Mosul.

Obama announced late Thursday that he had authorized airstrikes to defend U.S. personnel in Irbil. He also authorized strikes and humanitarian aid drops to assist thousands of displaced Iraqis in the area of Mount Sinjar, in northern Iraq.

The refugees, mostly members of the Yazidi religious minority, have fled the advancing Islamic State fighters. Many face the risk of imminent starvation on the barren mountain slopes, Obama said.

Speaking in New Delhi, before the bombing had begun, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said intelligence and ground reports indicated that 60 of the 72 crates of food and water that U.S. military planes airdropped onto Mount Sinjar early Friday morning had reached Iraqi refugees trapped there.

Hagel said so far, the Iraqis have not requested additional humanitarian aid.

“If they feel we can do more, and they want us to do more, then we’ll consider all those requests,” he said.

AFP Photo/Ali Al-Bayati

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U.S. Aircraft Strike Islamic State Artillery In Iraq: Pentagon

U.S. Aircraft Strike Islamic State Artillery In Iraq: Pentagon

Washington (AFP) — Two U.S. aircraft on Friday bombed Islamic State extremist positions in northern Iraq after artillery fire near U.S. personnel, the Pentagon said.

The raid — the most significant since the United States withdrew from Iraq — came a day after President Barack Obama authorized force as he voiced fears of genocide against minorities.

Two US F/A-18 aircraft dropped 500-pound (225-kilogram) laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece near the Kurdish region’s capital of Arbil, said Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby.

The United States bombed the position after Islamist fighters shelled Kurdish forces defending Arbil, where U.S. personnel are stationed, he said.

The strike, carried out at 1045 GMT, targeted the Sunni Muslim extremist movement Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that has swept across Syria and Iraq.

“As the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take direct action against ISIL when they threaten our personnel and facilities,” Kirby said in a statement.

Obama, who opposed the 2003 invasion and has vowed no return of ground troops, said Thursday that he authorized action due to fears of genocide as thousands of members of the Yazidi minority fled for their lives.

On Thursday, the United States dropped thousands of gallons of drinking water and 8,000 packaged meals to Yazidis who risk starvation as they cram onto Mount Sinjar.

AFP Photo/Safin Hamed

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Islamic State Pushes Back Kurdish Forces Near Irbil, Sparking Panic

Islamic State Pushes Back Kurdish Forces Near Irbil, Sparking Panic

By Mitchell Prothero, McClatchy Washington Bureau

IRBIL, Iraq — Militants from the Islamic State made a surprise attack early Thursday on strategic villages near Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, apparently capturing significant territory and sending thousands of refugees into the city.

Kurdish military officials said that the situation was under control, but the flow of people suggested otherwise — a startling reversal in a region long presumed safe from an Islamic State incursion. The United States, worried about security in Baghdad two months ago, selected Irbil as one of two Iraqi cities safe enough to receive staff evacuated from the U.S. Embassy.

Falah Bakir, the foreign minister for the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in an interview with CNN that the Kurds faced disaster and needed immediate assistance. “We are left alone in the front to fight the terrorists of ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State, who used to call itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

“I believe the United States has a moral responsibility to support us, because this is a fight against terrorism, and we have proven to be pro-democracy, pro-West, and pro-secularism,” Bakir said.

Tensions were high in the Kurdish capital. Western oil companies based in Irbil were shutting down operations and restricting their employees’ movements out of concerns for safety, while makeshift shelters popped up in public parks and churches in the Ain Kawa neighborhood to accommodate hundreds of people who’d fled. There was a noticeable increase in the presence of the Kurdish peshmerga militia in the city.

“I now know that the towns of Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella, and Karamlesh have been emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants,” Joseph Thomas, the Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah, told the Agence France Presse news agency. If verified, the fall of those villages would represent the loss of the largest Christian communities in Iraq.

Kurdish officials repeatedly have claimed that the United States and the Iraqi government in Bagdhad have refused to send military aid and that they have only Saddam Hussein-era weapons and limited ammunition to counter Islamic State forces that are armed with advanced American weaponry captured from Iraqi army depots in June.

A statement attributed to the Islamic State posted on the Internet said that the Islamists would target Irbil as retaliation for Kurdish officials’ agreement earlier this week to coordinate operations against the Islamic State with the central government in Baghdad.

“We are pleased to announce to the Islamic nation a new liberation in Nineveh province, teaching the secular Kurds a lesson,” the statement said.

The United States has long been seen as the Kurdish region’s protector. After the first Gulf War ended in 1991, the United States imposed a no-fly zone over the region to prevent Saddam Hussein’s air force from attacking. The Kurdish zone became a rare outpost of economic development in an era when harsh trade restrictions were imposed on the rest of Iraq. After U.S. forces toppled Saddam in 2003, the region enjoyed enormous autonomy and was largely free of the sectarian warfare and chaos that plagued the rest of Iraq during the American occupation.

Prior to this week, there had been only limited clashes between the Islamic State and the Kurds’ peshmerga militia along the nearly 900-mile border between the Kurdish region and areas the Islamists captured in June. But that changed after the Islamic State last weekend captured Sinjar in northwestern Iraq and attempted to take Mosul Dam, Iraq’s largest. Though the area technically lies outside the boundaries of what is known as the Kurdistan Regional Government, it has a predominantly Kurdish population, and the Kurdish government ordered a counteroffensive, including attacks by thousands of Kurdish fighters from Turkey and Syria.

In response, Wednesday night, the Islamist forces attacked peshmerga positions just a few miles to the southeast of Irbil, taking at least partial control of the village of Makhmour, a town that controls the main highway linking Irbil with Kirkuk to the south.

There were also local news reports, citing witnesses, that the black flag of the Islamic State was seen flying over the Mosul Dam on Thursday despite official government claims it remained in Kurdish hands.

The Islamic State statement on Thursday claimed it had taken control of a total of 15 villages and the dam since the weekend.

On Thursday, the Islamic State attacked peshmerga positions along the highway connecting Irbil to Mosul, overrunning the village of Gwer and at least part of the Christian village of Qarakosh, where tens of thousands of Christians had fled after Mosul fell.

Heavy mortar and artillery fire into the neighboring city of Bartella also sent the population running for Irbil.

Inside Irbil, peshmerga security forces expanded their presence and checkpoints in an effort to keep control of the flood of refugees. Reports from Kalak, the main checkpoint entering Irbil from Mosul, indicated authorities had shut the road to the flood of fleeing people and were diverting them to a nearby refugee camp that already houses tens of thousands.

AFP Photo/Karim Sahib

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