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France launches airstrikes in Iraq, bolsters US-led anti-jihadist drive
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FRANCE carried out its first airstrike against the Islamic State group in Iraq yesterday, boosting US-led efforts to unite the world against the growing threat posed by the jihadists.
More than a decade after Paris famously refused to back the invasion of Iraq, France became the first nation to join the US campaign of airstrikes in the war-torn country. “This morning at 9:40, our Rafale planes carried out a first strike against a logistics depot of the terrorist organization (IS),” President Francois Hollande said.
His office said the target was in northeastern Iraq, without specifying exactly where, only adding: “The objective was hit and completely destroy.”
French defence ministry sources said two jets dropped laser-guided GBU-12 bombs in the Mosul area.
Kurdish military spokesman Halgord Hekmat identified the location as Tal Mus, between the city of Mosul and Zumar.
“We are very happy that France started its raids,” he said.
France, as well as Britain, had already sent aircraft into Iraq’s skies for surveillance missions but yesterday’s strike was its first against the jihadists.
US aircraft have carried out more than 170 strikes since August 8 but President Barack Obama has been keen to build a broad international coalition.
The bombing campaign was launched to protect Iraqi Kurdistan from advancing jihadists and attempt to help the autonomous region’s troops retake the ground they lost.
Jihadists who had already controlled large swathes of land in neighboring Syria led a militant offensive that took the city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, on June 10 and then swept through much of the Sunni heartland.
In a second push in August, they dealt Iraq’s Kurdish peshmerga forces a string of military defeats and attacked various minority groups, demolished heritage sites and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
International outrage
Footage of the beheading of two US journalists and a British aid worker in Syria sparked international outrage and spurred calls for tougher action against what is widely regarded as the most violent and powerful organization in modern jihad.
Despite broad domestic support for a tougher stance, Obama has vowed not to send “boots on the ground,” fearful of dragging US forces back into the Iraqi quagmire only three years after pulling them out.
The US leader has instead pledged to support Kurdish and Iraqi federal forces by offering air support and arms, as well as targeting intelligence and training. On Thursday, Congress backed his plan to arm rebels to take on IS in conjunction with airstrikes Obama has pledged to carry out inside Syria.
“These terrorists thought they could frighten us, or intimidate us, or cause us to shrink from the world,” he said, after a rare moment of bipartisanship in the House. “But today they’re learning the same hard lesson of petty tyrants and terrorists who have gone before.”
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