US-led coalition continues air strikes on Syrian territories held by Islamic State

Activists say a US-led coalition launched more air strikes yesterday on territories in eastern and northern Syria held by the Islamic State militant group.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing a network of activists and residents, reported blasts more powerful than air strikes launched by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces fighting a three-year revolt against his rule.

“The roar of the planes and the strength of the explosions was similar to the raids launched by international Arab coalition . . . the shelling and strength of the blasts were different than the strikes by regime planes,” it said in a statement.

Some activists have complained that the strikes on Islamic State have yet to have any effect on the group’s strength or its military capabilities.

‘Strikes ineffective’

In Kobani near the Turkish border, where Kurdish militias are engaged in the biggest confrontation with Islamic State in Syria, activists said the strikes had done nothing to weaken the group’s offensive.

“The strikes have aimed for the back lines of Islamic State fighters and they have not been intensive enough. Instead of discouraging Islamic State from moving forward, they are pushing Islamic State towards us faster,” said Mohammed Ahmad, an activist.

He said fighters on the ground should be helped by being provided with better arms, or tactics should be changed to strike at Islamic State’s heavy weaponry near the front lines.

The group has advanced US weaponry worth millions of dollars that it seized when it over-ran military bases in Iraq this summer.

“The strikes aren’t hitting their attack forces, which are huge in number. It seems to have only made them intent on getting into the city faster . . . if they make it into the city they can take cover and the strikes would destroy Kobani.”

Some activists also warned that much of the group’s equipment could have been hidden. For the past two weeks there have been reports from Raqqa as well as the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab, in Aleppo, that the group has been emptying bases and moving supplies.

Lightning advance

US strikes against Islamic State began this summer, after the group made a lightning advance through large parts of Iraq and began to push into the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.

US president Barack Obama pledged this month to “degrade and destroy” the group by going after it in Syria with the help of a broad coalition of western and Arab partners.

The strikes have also focused on Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-linked affiliate in Syria that has enjoyed greater popularity than Islamic State among locals who see it as a partner to rebel forces fighting to topple Dr Assad.

Washington says it is going after a specific network within the organisation known as the “Khorasan group” that it said was planning attacks on the West.

Most of Syria’s opposition forces, which have long called for foreign intervention, are now wary of the strikes, which activists say have killed some civilians, including children.

They fear the aim is to attack a spectrum of Islamist groups that have dominated Syria’s opposition, a move that may spark more chaos or greater gains for Dr Assad in the wartorn country if the few moderate forces the West supports cannot fill the void.

Even the Hazm Movement, one of the few rebel groups directly supported by US aid, appeared to distance itself from the coalition strikes.

One group that appears to still be largely supportive of the strikes is Syria’s Kurds, whose militant groups have sought to play a similar role to Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces that pushed back Islamic State under the cover of US air strikes.

– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)