Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Bahrain, UAE confirm air strikes on 'terrorist' sites




Bahrain and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members sent planes to attack a number of "terrorist" sites, the Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) General Headquarters said on Tuesday, state news agency BNA reported.

"A group of fighter jets from the Royal Bahrain Air Force (RBAF) carried out earlier this morning, along with the air forces of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), allied and friendly countries, air strikes against a number of selected targets ... and destroyed them," the agency said, quoting a military statement.

It did not specify the targets.

The statement was the first comment from a GCC state since the United States launched air and missile strikes in Syria for the first time on Tuesday, killing dozens of Islamic State fighters.



Separately, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the UAE Air Force launched its first strikes against ISIL targets on Monday evening.

"The operation was conducted in coordination with other forces participating in the international effort against the ISIL," the ministry said in a statement published by news agency WAM.

US Central Command earlier on Tuesday said Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates participated in or supported the strikes against IS targets around the eastern cities of Raqqa, Deir al-Zor, Hasakah and Albu Kamal.

Warplanes and ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles struck "fighters, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance centre, supply trucks and armed vehicles," it said.


Washington also said US forces had acted alone to launch eight strikes in another area of Syria against the "Khorasan Group", an al Qaeda unit US officials have described in recent days as posing a threat similar to that from IS.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria, said at least 70 IS fighters were killed in strikes that hit at least 50 targets in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor and Hasakah provinces in Syria's east.

It said at least 50 fighters and eight civilians were killed in strikes targeting al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, in northern Aleppo and Idlib provinces, apparently referring to the strikes the Americans said targeted Khorasan.

The Observatory said most of the Nusra Front fighters killed were not Syrians.

The air attacks fulfil President Barack Obama's pledge to strike in Syria against IS, a Sunni Muslim group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq, imposing a mediaeval interpretation of Islam, slaughtering prisoners and ordering Shi'ites and non-Muslims to convert or die.

In a sign of how IS's rise has blurred lines in Middle East conflicts, the Syrian government said Washington had informed it hours before the strikes in a letter from Secretary of State John Kerry sent through his Iraqi counterpart.

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