Syrian warplanes bombed Sunni militants’ positions inside Iraq, military officials confirmed Wednesday, deepening concerns that the battle against an insurgency that spans the two neighboring countries could turn into an even wider regional conflict.
Secretary of State John Kerry warned against the threat and said other nations should stay out.
Meanwhile, a new insurgent artillery offensive against Christian villages in the north of Iraq sent thousands of Christians fleeing from their homes, seeking sanctuary in Kurdish-controlled territory, reporters on the scene said.
The United States government and a senior Iraqi military official confirmed that Syrian warplanes bombed militants’ positions Tuesday in and near the border crossing in the town of Qaim.
American officials said the target was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Sunni extremist group that has seized large areas of Iraq and seeks to carve out a purist Islamic enclave across both sides of the Syria-Iraq border.
“We’ve made it clear to everyone in the region that we don’t need anything to take place that might exacerbate the sectarian divisions that are already at a heightened level of tension,” Kerry said, speaking in Brussels at a meeting of diplomats from NATO nations.
As Syria’s role in Iraq increases, Iran has been flying surveillance drones over Iraq, controlling them from an airfield in Baghdad, U.S. officials said. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said they believe the drones are for surveillance only, but they could not rule out that the aircraft may be armed.
A top Iraqi intelligence official said Iran was secretly supplying the Iraqi security forces with weapons, including rockets, heavy machine guns and multiple rocket launchers. “Iraq is in a grave crisis and the sword is on its neck, so is it even conceivable that we turn down the hand outstretched to us?” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The involvement of Syria and Iran in Iraq suggests a growing cooperation among the three Shiite-led governments in response to the raging Sunni insurgency. And in an unusual twist, the U.S., Iran and Syria now find themselves with an overlapping interest in stabilizing Iraq’s government.
Anthony Cordesman, a prominent foreign policy analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that with Syria’s apparent willingness to now take on the Islamic State directly, “the real problem is how will Iran, the Iraqi Shiites and the Alawites in Syria coordinate their overall pressure on the Sunni forces?”
Bilal Saab, a senior fellow for Middle East Security at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s immediate priority is to fight the rebels inside his own country.
“His army is already overstretched and every bullet that doesn’t hit enemy targets at home can be a bullet wasted,” he said. “Going after ISIL along border areas could serve tactical goals but is more a luxury than anything else.”
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