US launches airstrikes in Iraq

Published August 8, 2014
US President Barack Obama. — File photo
US President Barack Obama. — File photo

WASHINGTON: The United States has begun air strikes against Islamic militant targets in Iraq to halt what President Barack Obama said was a potential “genocide," the Pentagon announced on Friday.

Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said US warplanes struck artillery that was being used against Kurdish forces defending the regional stronghold of Irbil.

Two FA-18 jets, launched from the USS George HW Bush aircraft carrier in the Gulf, dropped 500lb bombs on what the Pentagon described as a “mobile artillery piece” being used by fighters with the Islamic State, known as Isis or Isil.

Isis was using the artillery to shell peshmerga forces defending Irbil, the Kurdish stronghold, where some US forces are based, the US said.

President Barack Obama had authorised targeted air strikes against Islamic militants earlier on Thursday.

“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.

Separate humanitarian air drops have already began to bring relief to thousands of minority Iraqis trapped on a mountain in the northwest of Iraq.

Describing the threats against stranded Yazidi refugees as holding the potential for “genocide,” Mr Obama said he had authorised limited air strikes to help Iraqi forces, to assist in the fight to break the siege and protect the civilians trapped there.

Earlier, President Obama said that he has authorised the military to carry out targeted strikes in support of Iraqi forces to break the Islamic fighters' advance or to protect US advisors working on the ground.

A senior US defense official had earlier said the mission also dropped “critical meals and water for thousands of Iraqi citizens,” Yazidis trapped in the open on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.

Obama said there were perhaps tens of thousands of civilian refugees, and he accused the IS of attempting “the systematic destruction of the entire people, which would constitute genocide”.

He said the United States can not act every time it sees injustice, but insisted: “We can act, carefully and responsibly to prevent a potential act of genocide.”

“That's what we're doing on that mountain. I therefore authorised targeted air strikes if necessary to help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege and protect the civilians trapped there,” he added.

Despite this note of determination, Obama was at pains to assure war weary Americans that he — the president who withdrew US forces from Iraq — was not about to get “dragged into fighting another war”.

“American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq,” he promised.

Earlier, in New York, the United Nations Security Council urged world powers “to support the government and the people of Iraq and to do all it can to help alleviate the suffering of the population”.

Iraqi Ambassador Ali al-Hakim said the meeting focused on the need for urgent relief efforts to help civilians fleeing the violence, and denied reports that air strikes had also been carried out.

Separately, French President Francois Hollande's office said “France was available to support forces engaged in this battle”.


Mountain siege


Obama came to office determined to end US military involvement in Iraq and in his first term oversaw the withdrawal of the huge ground force deployed there since the 2003 American invasion.

But recent rapid gains by the Islamic State, a successor group to Al Qaeda's former Iraqi and Syrian operations, compelled him to send military advisors back to Baghdad to evaluate the situation.

The Sunni extremists, along with other Sunni factions, are at war with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's mainly Shia government forces and with the peshmerga forces of the Kurdish autonomous region of the country.

In late June, IS proclaimed a “caliphate” straddling rebel-held areas of Syria and Iraq and seized the major city of Mosul. In recent days, it has seized towns formerly populated by Christians and Yazidis.

Iraqi religious leaders say Islamic State militants have forced 100,000 Iraqi Christians to flee and have occupied churches, removing crosses and destroying manuscripts.

“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 Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah, told AFP.

Entirely Christian Qaraqosh lies between Mosul, the jihadists' main hub in Iraq, and Arbil, the Kurdish region's capital. It usually has a population of around 50,000.

Tal Kayf, the home of a significant Christian community as well as members of the Shabak Shiite minority, also emptied overnight.


100,000 Christians flee


“I heard some gunshots last night and, when I looked outside, I saw a military convoy from the Islamic State... shouting 'Allahu Akbar',” said Boutros Sargon, a refugee who was reached by phone in Arbil.

Meanwhile, several thousand Yazidis, members of an ancient pre-Muslim religious minority, are stranded on high ground after being driven out of their home town of Sinjar by IS fighters.

Fares Sinjari Abu Ivan, a Yazidi beekeeper who fled with his 80-year-old mother to the barren mountains, told AFP by phone that some groups had attempted to flee but experienced mixed fortunes.

“We have spoken to some who made it to Turkey but in their flight, they encountered Daash (Islamic State) fighters who cut the road. Some fled, some were killed and others came back to the mountain.”

Turkish officials said up to 800 displaced Sinjaris made their own way to Turkey, while the PKK Kurdish separatist group said it had evacuated several families after opening a safe passage to Syria.

The Islamic State boasted of its latest victories, declaring: “We are pleased to announce to the Islamic nation a new liberation in Nineveh province, teaching the secular Kurds a lesson.”

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