U.S., Arab Allies Strike IS Jihadists in Syria, Killing at Least 70
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-Qaida 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.
In the evening, Saudi Arabia confirmed it took part along with Arab allies in U.S.-led air strikes against jihadists from the Islamic State group in Syria on Tuesday.
"The Saudi Royal Air Force participated in the military operations against IS in Syria, in support of the moderate Syrian opposition, and as part of the international coalition," a government spokesman said, quoted by the official SPA news agency.
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 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.
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.
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-Qaida" 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-Qaida 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.
Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials said the United States gave the Syrian government prior warning it would strike against Islamic militants on its territory but did not say where or when.
The notification was delivered to Syria's permanent representative to the United Nations by Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the world body, twinned with a warning that Damascus must not interfere with U.S. aircraft, officials said.
"We did not request the regime's permission. We did not coordinate our actions with the Syrian government," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
"We did not provide advance notification to the Syrians at a military level, or give any indication of our timing on specific targets. Secretary Kerry did not send a letter to the Syrian regime."
"We warned Syria not to engage U.S. aircraft."
Power's warning was delivered after President Barack Obama's September 10 speech setting out his plan to target militants from the Islamic State group in both Iraq and Syria.
Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes insisted, as the White House has all along, that Washington did not coordinate in any way with the government of President Bashar Assad, whom it brands a war criminal, nor did it provide advance notice of the timing or the targets the U.S. was going to strike.
Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, meanwhile told CNN there had been "no interference" with U.S. operations from Syrian forces and that he did not anticipate any military communication with the Damascus government going forward.
But the Syrian foreign ministry, seeking to build political capital from the U.S. strikes, said in a statement that it backed "any international effort" to combat jihadists including from IS and the al-Nusra front.
Assad has long contended that all the rebels fighting his regime, including the U.S.-backed moderate opposition, are "terrorists."
Washington has ridiculed that argument, and repeatedly said Assad is to blame for terrorizing his people in a vicious civil war and contends he has lost all legitimacy and should step down.
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.
Source: Agence France Presse
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