WASHINGTON: The Pentagon said on Sunday that US air strikes had helped liberate a city in northern Iraq from the militants and in Syria the US was trying to raise a force of moderate opposition to fight the extremists.

Earlier on Sunday, the US support enabled the Iraqi military and civilian militias of break a two-month siege of the northern Iraqi town of Amirli.

Separately, the Pentagon has also asked for $500 million for a ‘train and equip’ programme for a moderate Syrian opposition.

“We hope to get that authorised and appropriated for fiscal year 2015, which is coming up here pretty soon, so that we can move out on this,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters in Washington.

“There are a lot of hurdles that remain to be leaped, in terms of getting us there.”

The US Air Force and aircraft from Australia, France and the United Kingdom participated in the operation that led to Amirli’s liberation.

The town is home to thousands of Shia Turkomen who had been denied food, water and medical supplies for more than two months.

“US aircraft conducted coordinated air strikes against nearby IS terrorists in order to support this humanitarian assistance operation,” Mr Kirby said.

In a statement to the Iraqiyya TV television station, a spokesman for Iraq’s military, Gen. Qassim Atta, also declared the town liberated from the insurgents.

The Pentagon also announced that the US Central Command is preparing a plan of options for President Barack Obama to contain the Islamic State militants in both Syria and Iraq.

During a White House press conference, President Obama said his administration did not yet have a strategy for combating militants in Syria. The statement earned him the wrath of Republican lawmakers and other critics who ridiculed the administration for not having a plan to deal with such a major threat.

“What the president was referring to was planning options inside Syria,” Admiral Kirby said. “Now, I’d be less than truthful if I said to you that we … hadn’t been thinking about that before yesterday. Of course we have been. And we’ve talked about that.”

The US Defence Department, however, had not yet firmed up those plans and that’s why they had not yet been discussed with commander-in-chief (President Obama), Mr Kirby said.

The Pentagon official clarified that options in Syria were not limited to military actions.

“It can’t just be military,” Kirby said. “There’s not going to be a military solution here to the threat that IS poses. It’s just not going to happen.”

Mr Kirby pointed out that the United States has been providing humanitarian aid to Iraqis victimised by the brutal militants’ tactics and US aircraft had also flown a number of strikes against the terror group in Iraq. “We’re up almost to 110 air strikes total since they began,” he added.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2014