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March 28, 2024

U.S. and allies hit Islamic State targets in Syria

Pentagon

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

In this Sept. 2, 2014, file photo, Pentagon press secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon. The Pentagon on Monday night, Sept. 22, 2014, says the U.S. and partner nations have begun airstrikes in Syria against Islamic State militants.

Updated Monday, Sept. 22, 2014 | 11:45 p.m.

WASHINGTON — The United States and allies launched airstrikes against Sunni militants in Syria early Tuesday, unleashing a torrent of cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs from the air and sea on the militants’ de facto capital of Raqqa and along the porous Iraq border.

U.S. fighter jets and armed Predator and Reaper drones, flying alongside warplanes from several Arab allies, struck a broad array of targets in territory controlled by the militants, known as the Islamic State. U.S. defense officials said the targets included weapons supplies, depots, barracks and buildings the militants use for command and control. Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from U.S. Navy ships in the region.

The strikes are a major turning point in President Barack Obama’s war against the Islamic State and open up a risky new stage of the U.S. military campaign. Until now, the administration had bombed Islamic State targets only in Iraq, and had suggested it would be weeks if not months before the start of a bombing campaign against Islamic State targets in Syria.

Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates took part in the strikes, U.S. officials said, although the Arab governments were not expected to announce their participation until later Tuesday. The new coalition’s makeup is significant because the United States was able to recruit Sunni governments to take action against the Sunni militants of the Islamic State. The operation also unites the squabbling states of the Persian Gulf.

The strikes came less than two weeks after Obama announced in an address to the nation that he was authorizing an expansion of the military campaign against the Islamic State.

Unlike U.S. strikes in Iraq over the past month, which have been small-bore bombings of mostly individual Islamic State targets — patrol boats and trucks — the salvo on Tuesday in Syria was the beginning of what was expected to be a sustained, hourslong bombardment at targets in the militant headquarters in Raqqa and on the border.

The strikes began after years of debate within the Obama administration about whether the United States should intervene militarily or should avoid another entanglement in a complex war in the Middle East. But the Islamic State controls a broad swath of land across both Iraq and Syria.

Defense officials said the goal of the air campaign was to deprive the Islamic State of the safe havens it enjoys in Syria. The administration’s ultimate goal, as set forth in the address Obama delivered on Sept. 10, is to recruit a global coalition to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the militants, even as Obama warned that “eradicating a cancer” like the Islamic State was a long-term challenge that would put some U.S. troops at risk.

U.S. warplanes had been conducting aerial surveillance flights in Syria for more than a month in anticipation of airstrikes, but it had been unclear just how much intelligence the Pentagon had managed to gather about the movements of the Sunni militant group in Syria. Unlike Iraq, whose airspace is controlled by the United States, Syria has its own aerial defense system, so U.S. planes have had to rely on sometimes jamming the country’s defenses when crossing into Syria.

The strikes in Syria occurred without the approval of President Bashar Assad of Syria, whose government, unlike Iraq, did not ask the U.S. for help against the Sunni militant group. Obama has repeatedly called on Assad to step down because of chemical weapons attacks and violence against his own people, and defense officials said Assad had not been told in advance of the strikes.

But administration officials acknowledge that U.S. efforts to roll back the Sunni militant group in Syria cannot help but aid Assad, whose government is also a target of the Islamic State.

The United Arab Emirates announced three weeks ago that it was willing to participate in the campaign against the Islamic State, and administration officials have also said they expect the Iraqi military to take part in strikes both in Iraq and Syria. If both nations are in fact participants, the strikes on Tuesday could mark a rare instance when the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military has cooperated in a military operation with its Sunni Arab neighbors.

Combined with a French airstrike last week on a logistics depot held by Islamic State militants in northeastern Iraq, the allied participation in the strikes allows Obama to make the case that his plan to target the Islamic State has international cooperation.

In addition, Saudi Arabia recently agreed to a training facility for moderate members of the Syrian opposition, who the U.S. hopes to train, equip and send back to Syria to fight both Assad and Islamic State militants.

On Wednesday, Obama is expected to speak of the international coalition in an address to the U.N. General Assembly.

Associated Press writers Zeina Karam, Julie Pace and Matthew Lee in New York, Josh Lederman in Washington and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

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