By Jaime Ortega.
United States and the group “allied nations against terrorism” began on Monday offensive air strikes against jihadist group Islamic State (IS). Te agreement was announced in Syria two weeks ago by President Barack Obama, as the Defense Department reported to the North American country.
“Forces of the United States and allied nations have begun attacks on IS in Syria using a combination of fighters, bombers and Tomahawk missiles,” announced on Twitter Pentagon spokesman, Admiral John Kirby. Specifically, the international coalition aircraft have launched attacks targeting fifty groups in the Syrian provinces of Raqqa and Deir al Zur, which caused an unknown number of casualties, according to initial findings of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based on testimony from civil and medical services in the area.
In Raqqa, the international aviation launched twenty bombings targeting bases and checkpoints of extremist organization in the city of the same name, their main stronghold on Syrian soil, and on its northern and western suburbs, as well as in the towns of Tel Abiad , Ain Tabaqa and Aisa. One goal of the attacks was the ancient seat of the provincial government of Raqqa, the IS had become one of its most important barracks.
In these bombings, there were several victims, including extremists, although the IS evacuated their bases last week against the imminent American attack.
Meanwhile, in Deir al Zur, international aircraft carried out attacks on twenty jihadi bases in the town of Al Bukamal border with Iraq, and around, and threw another eight in the eastern suburbs of the city of Deir al-Zur.
The attacks have also attained positions of Al-Nusra Facing-the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda in the province of Aleppo, north of the country, according to data from the Observatory, which encrypts seven fighters and eight civilians dead at this point .
Notice to Damascus
The United States Central Command made the decision to start the bombing of the IS in Syria on Monday after receiving authorization from Obama, Kirby said in a brief statement in which he did not elaborate more on the attacks “since the operation is in march “. The Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, later confirmed that Washington had previously advised the government in Damascus to the start of the bombing, as recorded by Al-Jazeera. “The American side informed the Syrian permanent envoy to the UN that would hit the IS in Raqqa,” says the official Syrian news agency Sana.
Official sources told CNN that all nations who collaborate with the United States in these attacks are Arabs, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE.
The American president had resisted until this September an attack in Syria, as a year ago he refused to intervene against the Syrian regime for its use of chemical weapons. Progress in the last months of IS, a group strengthened in the Syrian civil war and the brutality of their beheadings of Western televised have forced Obama to launch a new military operation in the Middle East after a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan inherited by George W. Bush.
Obama insists that this operation will be different from these contests because in no case will involve the deployment of American ground troops in the field, but faced skepticism from those who believe, even within the Pentagon, it is impossible to beat the IS without ground fighting.
The chronology of a strategy
Since the announcement of the offensive on September 10, Obama and the Congress of the United States Administration have been taking steps to implement the strategy drawn by the president.
On the 15th, the United States launched the first attack on the IS near Baghdad as part of the expansion of its offensive in Iraq by sending 475 more soldiers, a figure that completes a total of over 1,600 since the start of the air strikes in that country on August 8.
Until then the American offensive against IS in Iraq was limited to jihadists positions in the north to protect your personal or humanitarian reasons. Three days later, Congress authorized the arming of Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State, a “key element” for Obama’s strategy to stop the jihad group.
The Islamic State, strengthened civil by the war in Syria and has not only gained power and ground in recent months, but also visibility. Their progress in Iraq and the brutal televised beheadings have shocked the Western world and presented this group as an even more formidable threat than Al Qaeda.
United States continues to build a coalition as broad as possible countries to defeat the jihadists because one of the red lines of Obama is that America, unlike what happened in the years of George W. Bush does not act alone.
The other red line is that there is no ground combat troops in Iraq or in Syria, so the President insists that this operation is not a new Iraq or Afghanistan, wars he inherited from Bush.
