At Iraq's request, the U.S. began airstrikes in Tikrit on Wednesday in support of a stalled Iraqi ground offensive to retake the city from Islamic State fighters, the Pentagon said.
"These strikes are intended to destroy ISIL strongholds with precision, thereby saving innocent Iraqi lives while minimizing" unintended damage to civilian structures, Lt. Gen. James Terry, the commander of a U.S.-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State extremist group, said in a written statement.
"This will further enable Iraqi forces under Iraqi command to maneuver and defeat ISIL in the vicinity of Tikrit," Terry said, using an acronym for the Islamic State, which is also sometimes referred to as ISIS.
The operation to take Tikrit was announced with great fanfare March 2, with an estimated 20,000 Shiite militia fighters advised by Iranian military commanders taking the lead in the fighting.
After initial success in capturing towns outside Tikrit, the effort stalled 10 days ago, hindered by heavy government casualties and a disagreement over tactics.
A U.S.-led air campaign launched in August has allowed Iraqi forces to halt the Islamic State's advance and claw back some of the territory the extremist group seized in other areas, but the U.S. initially did not provide air support in Tikrit because Baghdad chose instead to partner with Iran.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, in a speech broadcast on Iraqi state TV from an undisclosed location in Salahuddin province Wednesday night, hailed the strikes, saying, "The time of freedom has just been started."
He continued: "We announce today what we have promised you yesterday, that we are going to liberate and clear each spot of our territory, and ISIS won't have a foothold on Iraq's land."
Earlier Wednesday, Khalid Shwani, a spokesman for Iraqi President Fuad Masum, said Iraqi and U.S. officials had formed a committee of senior advisers to decide whether airstrikes would be beneficial.
An Iraqi commander in Tikrit said a warehouse used to store Islamic State weapons was bombed by a U.S. plane, and a U.S. official in Washington confirmed that arms warehouses were among the targets. The Iraqi commander spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the airstrikes.
The Washington official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss military details, said there were no more than one dozen airstrikes Wednesday, and said some were conducted by U.S. allies. The official had no details on the extent of allied participation, including which countries launched airstrikes.
The official said Wednesday's attacks were the first in a series that would be carried out in the days to come as the U.S.-led coalition coordinates with Iraqi ground troops who have encircled Tikrit but not penetrated deeply into the city.
The battle for Tikrit is widely seen as a step toward the more difficult and potentially decisive battle to regain control of the larger city of Mosul. But U.S. airstrikes in Tikrit raise questions about participating in an Iraqi campaign that has been spearheaded by Iraqi Shiite militias trained and equipped by Iran, a U.S. adversary.
Iran has provided artillery and other weaponry for the Tikrit battle, and senior Iranian advisers have helped Iraq coordinate the offensive. U.S. officials have estimated that two-thirds of the ground troops involved in the offensive are Shiite militias; the others are combinations of regular Iraqi army soldiers and Sunni tribal fighters.
The prominent role of the Shiite militias in the fight to retake Tikrit and other parts of Iraq's Sunni heartland also has raised concerns that the offensive could deepen the country's sectarian divide and drive Sunnis into the arms of the Islamic State, a Sunni-dominated group.
The announcement that American airstrikes had begun came one day after the top Iranian general in Iraq, Qassem Suleimani, was reported to have left Tikrit, where he had been said to be in charge of the operation.
The U.S. has hundreds of military advisers in Iraq helping its security forces plan operations against the Islamic State, which controls large chunks of northern and western Iraq and large portions of neighboring Syria. But the U.S. has said it is not coordinating any military actions with the Iranians.
In his statement Wednesday, Terry said the U.S. airstrikes were aimed at energizing the Iraqis.
"Renewed efforts on the ground supported by the coalition are aimed at dislodging ISIL fighting elements from Tikrit and once again placing the town under [Iraqi] control," Terry said.
A series of U.S. airstrikes north of Tikrit, in the vicinity of Beiji, in recent weeks has had the indirect benefit of tying down Islamic State forces that might otherwise be operating in defense of Tikrit.
On Wednesday, for example, the U.S. military said it had conducted five airstrikes Tuesday near Beiji, home of a major oil refinery the extremists have sought to capture. That bombing targeted Islamic State combat units and destroyed what the U.S. called an extremist "fighting position," as well as an armored vehicle.
Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said that at Baghdad's request the U.S. began aerial surveillance over Tikrit in recent days and is sharing the collected intelligence with the Iraqi government.
But Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the Badr Organization and a commander of Iraq's Shiite militias, said the Iraqis didn't need U.S. help.
"If we need them [the U.S.-led coalition] we will tell them we need them," he said. "But we don't need the coalition. We have surveillance planes over our heads already. The participation of U.S. planes hinders our operations. ... If we need it, we'll tell our government what we need."
He claimed the militias have their own surveillance drones.
"We buy them anywhere," he said. "We have our own ... controlled by Iraqis."
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Burns, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press; by Rod Nordland, Omar al-Jawosy and staff members of The New York Times; and by Mark Seibel, Mitchell Prothero and staff members of Tribune News Services.
A Section on 03/26/2015