The United States and five Arab allies launched the first airstrikes in Syria against the Islamic State Sunni extremist group Tuesday, and the Pentagon said a unilateral attack targeted an al-Qaeda affiliate in the north.
The US military said it partnered with Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to conduct 14 strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria overnight.
Damascus, which had earlier warned against attacks on its territory without its consent and said any foreign intervention would be an act of aggression, issued a mildly worded statement that said any action against the Islamic State should respect international law.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem received a letter from US Secretary of State John Kerry informing him that Washington was going to strike Islamic State bases, some of which were in Syria.
Russia, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warned that the unilateral use of force violates international law. Merely “notifying” countries hit by airstrikes is not enough, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said.
“You need a clear approval from the Syrian government or a UN Security Council decision,” it said.
The US and its allies used “a mix of fighter, bomber, remotely piloted aircraft and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles,” US Central Command said, to damage or destroy the Islamic State’s training compounds, command facilities, armed vehicles and supply trucks.
The militant group – which has seized large swathes of territory in northern and eastern Syria and neighbouring Iraq – was hit in its north-eastern Syrian stronghold of al-Raqqa.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group, said 70 Islamic State militants were killed in the airstrikes in northern and eastern Syria, and at least 300 were wounded.
The strikes additionally targeted Islamic State militants in the town of al-Bu Kamal on the Iraqi border, Kirkuk in northern Iraq, as well as positions near the Kurdish enclave of Kobane in northern Syria, where an offensive launched by the jihadists last week forced 130,000 civilians to flee across the Turkish border.
Jordan’s official Petra news agency, quoting an unnamed military official, said the country’s air force had destroyed bases of “terrorist groups” that had been involved in attacks against the kingdom.
Separately, the US military – acting alone – conducted eight airstrikes west of the northern Syrian province of Aleppo against al-Qaeda targets, including training camps and a munitions factory.
Syrian sources said that bases of the al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra Front – which fights alongside rebel groups against both the Islamic State and the al-Assad government – were hit.
US Central Command did not mention al-Nusra by name, but referred to “a network of seasoned al-Qa’ida veterans – sometimes referred to as the Khorasan Group – who have established a safe haven in Syria to develop external attacks, construct and test improvised explosive devices and recruit Westerners to conduct operations.”
The Observatory said at least 50 members of al-Nusra were killed in the attack, “mainly of non-Arab nationalities.”
Eight civilians including at least two children were also killed in the strikes, the monitoring group said.
US President Barack Obama – who pledged to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State group – had earlier this month signalled an expansion of airstrikes to Syria to confront the militants.
Obama is to chair a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, when he will ask the 15-member committee to vote on a US-drafted resolution that compels 193 UN member states to prevent their citizens from joining terrorist groups.
That resolution is part of the US strategy to expand the international effort against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
GNA
