DEVELOPMENTS
— President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law legislation authorizing the military to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State militants in the Middle East. Obama acted a day after a Senate vote capped congressional action on the request.
— Influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani on Friday urged vigilance against Western political interference in Iraqi affairs but stopped short of opposing the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State extremists.
— Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno warned Friday that it will become increasingly difficult to target and launch precision airstrikes against Islamic State militants hiding among the Iraqi population. The militant fighters are starting to infiltrate the population, and there are reports they are using children and others as shields, he said.
— Several thousand Syrians, most of them Kurds, crossed into Turkey on Friday to find refuge from Islamic State militants who have barreled through dozens of Kurdish villages in northern Syria in the past 48 hours.
News services
France is back at America’s side in conducting military strikes in Iraq.
More than a decade after spurning President George W. Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein, France on Friday became the first country to join U.S. forces pounding targets inside Iraq from the air — this time in pursuit of militants of the Islamic State group.
Flying from the United Arab Emirates, two French Rafale jets fired four laser-guided bombs to destroy a weapons and fuel depot outside the northern city of Mosul, part of the territory the militants have overrun in Iraq and neighboring Syria, officials said.
An Iraqi military spokesman said dozens of extremist fighters were killed in the strikes. A French military official said a damage assessment had not been completed, while showing reporters aerial images of targets hit. Officials said it was at a former military installation seized by the group.
One analyst said the French action was more symbolic than substantive — France’s military means in the region are limited — but it could give political cover for other allies to join in and show that the U.S. is not acting alone in a country still sown with deadly violence 11 years after Saddam’s ouster.
“We are facing throat-cutters,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council that was called to show support for Iraq’s government in battling the militants. “They rape, crucify and decapitate. They use cruelty as a means of propaganda. Their aim is to erase borders and to eradicate the rule of law and civil society.”
For all his political and economic troubles at home, French President Francois Hollande has again showed he will use force to fight Islamic militants to help a beleaguered government.
Other such operations in Iraq would continue in coming days, Hollande said, “with the same goal — to weaken this terrorist organization and come to the aid of the Iraqi authorities.”
“In no case will there be French troops on the ground: This is only about planes that, in liaison with Iraqi authorities (and) in coordination with our allies, will allow for a weakening of the terrorist organization,” he said.
Hollande stressed that France’s actions were limited to supporting the Iraqi military or Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and wouldn’t involve targets in Syria.
Not so long ago, coordinated French and U.S. military strikes in Iraq might have been unthinkable. But feeding off sectarian strife in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State group has destabilized the region and become a lure for jihad-minded youths from France, elsewhere in Europe and beyond.
Hollande says France is operating independently in Iraq, based on a request for airstrikes from Baghdad and in coordination with its allies. The U.S. Central Command said Thursday the U.S. military has conducted 176 airstrikes in Iraq since Aug. 8.
Broadly unpopular at home, Hollande has nonetheless drawn praise for a muscular foreign policy. Iraq is the third country in which he has authorized firepower: French troops largely purged al-Qaida-linked militants from Mali in 2011 and have sought to end sectarian violence in Central African Republic.
In 2011, France and the U.S., as well as Britain, did the heavy lifting in the NATO-led airstrikes in Libya. Last year, France was ready to join possible U.S. military action against President Bashar Assad’s forces in Syria, before President Barack Obama stopped short. In recent weeks, French authorities have ruefully suggested that the U.S. inaction fostered the rise of jihadists in the region.
The U.N. Security Council condemned the Islamic State group in a presidential statement approved Friday by all 15 members in a session chaired by Kerry.
The statement expressed “deep outrage” at the killing, kidnapping, rape and torture of Iraqis and citizens of other countries by the Islamic State group. It noted that some of those acts might constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The first French airstrikes in Iraq have additional significance: France, one of America’s oldest allies, was among the most vocal critics of Bush’s decision to conduct military action in 2003 that toppled Saddam.
Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraq’s military, said the French airstrikes hit the town of Zumar, killing dozens of the group’s fighters. Hollande said France has taken precautions to prevent civilian casualties, and the French military official said the depot was in a remote area.
Zumar and surrounding towns have remained heavily contested by Islamic State fighters, even as Iraqi and Kurdish security forces have managed to make headway in nearby regions with the support of U.S. airstrikes.
The French bombs fell within minutes of a ceremony in which Gen. Martin Dempsey, the U.S. military commander, laid flowers at a Normandy cemetery honoring thousands of U.S. troops who died in France in World War II. Dempsey said he was told of the attack by French counterpart Gen. Pierre de Villiers, and he praised the French action.
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