U.S. expands Islamic State fight to Syria

Riot police use water cannons to disperse Kurdish demonstrators who were clashing with Turkish security forces, as thousands of Syrian refugees continue to arrive at the border in Suruc, Turkey, Monday, Sept. 22, 2014. Turkey opened its border Saturday to allow in up to 60,000 people who massed on the Turkey-Syria border, fleeing the Islamic militants’ advance on Kobani.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
Riot police use water cannons to disperse Kurdish demonstrators who were clashing with Turkish security forces, as thousands of Syrian refugees continue to arrive at the border in Suruc, Turkey, Monday, Sept. 22, 2014. Turkey opened its border Saturday to allow in up to 60,000 people who massed on the Turkey-Syria border, fleeing the Islamic militants’ advance on Kobani.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon said the U.S. and partner nations have begun airstrikes in Syria against Islamic State militants, using a mix of fighter jets, bombers and Tomahawk missiles fired from ships in the region.

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said that because the military operation is ongoing, no details can be provided yet. He said the decision to strike was made early Monday by the military.

The strikes are part of the expanded military campaign that President Barack Obama authorized nearly two weeks ago in order to disrupt and destroy the Islamic State militants, who have reportedly killed thousands of people; beheaded Westerners, including two American journalists; and captured a large swath of territory stretching from within Syria to land across northern and Western Iraq.

Some of the airstrikes were against Islamic State group targets in Raqqa. Military officials have said the U.S. would target militants' command and control centers, re-supply facilities, training camps, and other key logistical sites.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the plan "includes targeted actions against ISIL safe havens in Syria, including its command and control logistics capabilities and infrastructure." ISIL is an acronym commonly used for the Islamic State.

Hagel said he and Dempsey approved the plan.

The U.S. has also been increasing its surveillance flights over Syria, getting better intelligence on potential targets and militant movements.

More than 130,000 refugees have flooded into Turkey from Syria in recent days, fleeing attacks by Islamic State militants on their villages, Turkey's deputy prime minister said Monday, although local officials in Syria said that Kurdish militias had blunted the militants' advance there.

For nearly a week, the Islamic State has been using tanks and heavy artillery to sweep through hamlets with mostly Kurdish inhabitants near the north central Syrian border town known to Arabs as Ayn al-Arab and to Kurds as Kobani. Taking Ayn al-Arab would give the Islamic State control of a large swath of the Syrian-Turkish frontier -- and another potential route for Islamic State recruits.

But Kurdish Syrian fighters claimed they have halted -- at least for the moment -- the advance of the militants, who have taken more than 60 Kurdish Syrian villages in the past week. Kurdish spokesman Xelil said fighting still flared on three fronts.

The fighting poses major problems for Turkey, which already had nearly than 1.5 million Syrian refugees on its hands, including 200,000 living in camps near the border. The new influx is one of the largest since the crisis in Syria began more than three years ago, and it is prompting Kurdish fighters in Turkey to rush across the border and join the fight in Syria.

"What we are faced with is a man-made disaster," Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy prime minister, said Monday. "We don't know how many more villages may be raided, how many more people may be forced to seek refuge." He said the crisis caused by the Islamic State's advance was "worse than a natural disaster."

Enver Muslim, a local official in Ayn al-Arab, said that Kurdish militias had mobilized there and that they had halted the militants' advance about 5 miles outside of town.

He said that Kurdish fighters and civilians had evacuated a number of villages that were deemed indefensible, adding to the flow of refugees. But he said the local forces dug in around Ayn al-Arab have been reinforced by many fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey, known as the PKK.

An 18-year-old Turkish citizen in Suruc said he wanted to join the Kurdish fighters in Syria. He identified himself only by his first name of Azam for fear of reprisal from authorities.

"The Islamic State is on the other side of the border and moving freely, slaughtering people, but they are just sitting and watching," he said of the Turkish authorities.

"If I get a chance to get a weapon, I'll go to help our brothers by end of the day," he said. "Kobani is our land, too, and people there are our people."

Syrian Kurdish fighters were crossing back and forth over the border, while other Syrian Kurds were seen selling livestock to raise money for weapons.

Turkey has closed its border near Ayn al-Arab to Turkish Kurds in the hope of preventing them from joining the fight in Syria. A few hundred young men protested the policy near the border Monday, throwing stones at Turkish security forces, who responded with tear gas and water cannons.

Barazani Hamam, a relief worker near the border, said Turkey regularly opened its crossings to allow refugees in but that many thousands more remained displaced inside Syria.

More than 3 million Syrians have sought refuge in neighboring states including Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

Turkey's ambivalence

Spillover from Syria poses a problem for Turkey. The only local fighters capable of resisting the Islamic State group are Syrian Kurds aligned with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has fought a three-decade insurgency in southeastern Turkey.

Turkey's ambivalence about the fight between Kurds and the Islamic State group, which could leave the Kurdistan Workers' Party either drained or emboldened, could further complicate its participation in a U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group.

While joining the coalition, Turkey had declined to take part in combat, previously citing the 49 hostages held by the Islamic State group in Mosul, Iraq. But even after the 46 Turks and three Iraqis were freed, Turkey has not changed its stance.

Turkish government officials have not revealed how they managed to secure the release of the captives. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denied paying a ransom but has been vague on whether there was a prisoner swap.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington now expects Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of the NATO military alliance, to step up in the fight against the militants.

"The proof will be in the pudding," Kerry told MSNBC.

Erdogan has said that Turkey will discuss its participation in the coalition during this month's U.N. General Assembly.

The U.S. is looking for major participation from nations in the region in the campaign to destroy the Islamic State group.

But Turkey may also have questions for the U.S., if the support that Washington gives to Kurds in Iraq is extended to the Kurds fighting in Syria. Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters are already starting to get training by Iraq's Western allies in fighting the Islamic State group.

"The U.S. says it will make sure that arms won't go to the PKK, but this isn't possible," said Hasan Koni, a professor of international law at Istanbul's Kultur University. He added that the tensions have brought the peace process to its most difficult phase as Kurds question Turkey's ambivalent stance in their fight in Syria and Iraq.

Turkish authorities may have concerns that Turkey's Kurds, bolstered by Western arms and emboldened by battlefield success, could harden their demands on the government in Ankara.

U.S.-led forces have stepped up air attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq but are deeply divided over whether to expand the offensive to Syria -- where President Bashar Assad is battling rebels in a separate conflict that began more than three years ago.

Obama has said the United States may strike the Islamic State inside Syria, but it has yet to do so. Last week, Washington approved $500 million to support rival rebel groups in Syria that it regards as more moderate.

While the U.S. and other allies insist there are no plans to commit ground troops, some political and military figures have suggested airstrikes alone may not be enough. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, writing on his Faith Foundation website, said it would be better if the troops were to come from those closer to the fighting, such as Iraqi or Kurdish forces, but this may not be enough.

"There is real evidence that now countries in the Middle East are prepared to shoulder responsibility and I accept fully there is no appetite for ground engagement in the West," Blair said in an essay dated Monday. "But we should not rule it out in the future if it is absolutely necessary."

'Kill any infidel'

The Islamic State responded Monday to the planned international coalition by taunting Obama and calling on its supporters around the world to carry out individual attacks on non-Muslims.

"Wherever you are, hinder those who want to harm your brothers and the state as much as you can," the group's spokesman, known as Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, said in a 55-minute audio recording posted online Monday. "The best thing you can do is to make an effort to kill any infidel, French, American or any of their allies."

He continued, "If you are not able to use an explosive charge or a bullet, then single out the American or French infidel or any of their allies and smash his head with a rock, slaughter him with a knife, run him over with a car, throw him from a high place, choke him or poison him."

The statement was released in Arabic by the Islamic State group's media arm, Al-Furqan, and appeared on militant sites used by the group.

It was unclear what threat the call for attacks posed.

The militants' call for "lone wolf" attacks was part of a wider warning in the audio recording that the United States and its allies were choosing to begin a war with the world's Muslims.

"Oh, Americans, oh, Europeans, the Islamic State did not initiate a war against you, as your governments and media try to make you believe," al-Adnani said in the recording, which included an English translation. "It is you who started the transgression against us, and thus you deserve blame and you will pay a great price."

Al-Adnani promised that the expected battle against the U.S. alliance would be the final chapter of a war that he cast as centuries old, dating to the Medieval Crusades.

Elsewhere, militants in Algeria seized a French citizen Sunday and later issued a statement saying it was in response to al-Adnani's appeal. In a video that appeared on social media, a masked member of an al-Qaida splinter organization calling itself Jund al-Khilafah, or Soldiers of the Caliphate, said he would kill his captive within 24 hours if France did not withdraw from the coalition seeking to destroy the Islamic State group.

In a video that appeared on social media, a masked member of Jund al-Khilafah, or Soldiers of the Caliphate, addressed the threat to French President Francois Hollande and said the hostage would be killed unless the airstrikes were halted within 24 hours.

French forces joined the U.S. on Friday in carrying out airstrikes against forces from the Islamic State group.

The Frenchman appeared in the video flanked by two armed masked men and said he was taken hostage on Sunday and reiterated its demands that French airstrikes end.

The Jund al-Khilafah group broke away from al-Qaida's North African branch in recent weeks and has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council is expected to adopt a binding resolution this week that would require nations to bar their citizens from traveling abroad to join terrorism organizations.

Obama administration officials touted the measure, which they said had been negotiated over several months, as a significant step in their strategy against the Islamic State group and other militant organizations that are drawing in Europeans and Americans. But they acknowledged that the U.N. resolution has no enforcement mechanism and the international community has no single definition of what constitutes a terrorist group.

"This is really designed to sort of elevate the collective nature of the threat," a senior Obama administration official told a group of reporters Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. and many European nations already have laws that allow them to prosecute their citizens who attempt to or succeed in traveling to join extremist groups. The U.N. resolution is intended to prod other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, to step up efforts to stop the flow of foreign fighters, the officials said.

Obama is expected to lead the U.N. Security Council session that begins Wednesday, just the second time a U.S. president has done so.

Information for this article was contributed by Ben Hubbard, Hwaida Saad and Karam Shoumali of The New York Times; by Desmond Butler, Suzan Fraser, Mohammed Rasool, Bassem Mroue, Diaa Hadid, Maamoun Youssef, Ken Dilanian, Jim Kuhnhenn, Aomar Ouali, Paul Schemm, Jamey Keaten, Danica Kirka, Lolita C. Baldor and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Rebecca Collard, Brian Murphy and Suzan Haidamous of The Washington Post.

A Section on 09/23/2014


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