|
 The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the
strikes hit mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian
town of Manbij, in an area controlled by Islamic State, killing at
least two civilian workers.
Strikes on a building on a road leading out of the town also killed
a number of Islamic State fighters, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs
the observatory, which gathers information from sources in Syria.
The U.S. military said on Monday an American air strike targeted
Islamic State vehicles in a staging area adjacent to a grain storage
facility near Manbij, but it had no evidence so far of civilian
casualties.
While raids in Iraq and Syria have taken a toll on Islamic State
equipment and fighters on the ground, there is no sign the tide is
turning against the group, which controls large areas of both
countries.
A U.S. Air Force general said Islamic State militants were changing
their tactics in the face of American air strikes in Iraq and Syria,
abandoning large formations such as convoys that had been easier for
the U.S. military to target.
“They are a smart adversary, and they have seen that that's not
effective for their survival, so they are now dispersing
themselves,” Air Force Major General Jeffrey Harrigian said at a
Pentagon news conference.
That “requires us to work harder to locate them, and then develop
the situation to appropriately target them”, he said.
In a statement to the United Nations that appeared to give approval
of U.S. and Arab air strikes in Syria against the militants, Syria's
foreign minister said his country backed the campaign against
Islamic State.
Syria "stands with any international effort aimed at fighting and
combating terrorism", said Walid al-Moualem, whose government has
long been an international pariah because of what critics say is its
brutality in a civil war that has killed 190,000 people.
U.S. congressional aides said Congress might not vote until next
year on an authorization for President Barack Obama's air strikes
against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, despite some
lawmakers' insistence that approval is already overdue.
Obama has said he does not need approval for the air strikes,
despite the constitutional requirement that Congress authorize
military action.
The U.S.-led strikes have so far failed to halt an advance by
Islamic State fighters in northern Syria on Kobani, a Kurdish town
on the border with Turkey where fighting over the past week caused
the fastest refugee flight of Syria's three-year-old war.
At least 15 Turkish tanks could be seen at the frontier, some with
guns pointed towards Syrian territory. More tanks and armored
vehicles moved towards the border after shells landed in Turkey on
Sunday and Monday.
ARAB ALLIES
The United States has been bombing Islamic State and other groups in
Syria for a week with the help of Arab allies, and hitting targets
in neighboring Iraq since last month. European countries have joined
the campaign in Iraq but not in Syria.
Islamic State, a Sunni militant group that broke off from al Qaeda,
alarmed the West and the Middle East by sweeping through northern
Iraq in June, slaughtering prisoners and ordering Shi'ites and
non-Muslims to convert or die.
It is battling Shi'ite-backed governments in both Iraq and Syria, as
well as other Sunni groups in Syria and Kurdish groups in both
countries, part of complex multi-sided civil wars in which nearly
every country in the Middle East has a stake.
The head of Syria's al Qaeda branch, the Nusra Front, a Sunni
militant group that is a rival of Islamic State and has also been
targeted by U.S. strikes, said Islamists would carry out attacks on
the West in retaliation for the campaign.
Obama has worked since August to build an international coalition to
combat the fighters, describing them last week in an address to the
United Nations as a "network of death".
[to top of second column]
|
His comments in an interview broadcast on Sunday that U.S.
intelligence had underestimated Islamic State offered an explanation
for why Washington appeared to have been taken by surprise when the
fighters surged through northern Iraq in June.
The militants had gone underground when U.S. forces quashed al Qaeda
in Iraq with the aid of local tribes during the U.S. war there that
ended in 2011, Obama told CBS's "60 Minutes". "But over the past
couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where
essentially you have huge swathes of the country that are completely
ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take
advantage of that chaos," he said.
Obama's remarks came under fire on Monday from several U.S.
lawmakers and members of the intelligence community.
"This was not an intelligence community failure but a failure by
policy makers to confront the threat," said Mike Rogers, Republican
chairman of the House of Representative Intelligence Committee.
BATTLE ON BORDER
Gunfire rang out from across the border, and a plume of smoke rose
over Kobani as periodic shelling by Islamic State fighters took
place. Kurds watching the fighting from the Turkish side of the
border said the Syrian Kurdish group, the YPG, was putting up a
strong defense.
"Many Islamic State fighters have been killed. They're not taking
the bodies with them," said Ayhan, a Turkish Kurd who had spoken by
phone with one of his friends fighting with the YPG. He said Kurdish
forces had picked up eight Islamic State bodies.
At Mursitpinar, the nearby border crossing, scores of young men were
returning to Syria saying they would join the fight. More refugees
were fleeing in the opposite direction.
"Because of the bombs, everyone is running away. We heard people
have been killed," said Xelil, a 39-year-old engineer who fled
Kobani on Monday. "The YPG have got light weapons, but Islamic State
has big guns and tanks."
A local official in Kobani said Islamic State continued to besiege
the town from the east, west and south and that the militants were
10 km (6 miles) from the outskirts.
"From the morning there has been shelling into Kobani and ... maybe
about 20 rockets," Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister in a local
Kurdish administration said by phone. He said the rockets had killed
at least three people in the town.
Turkey has not permitted its own Kurds to cross to join the battle:
"If they've got Syrian identity or passports, they can go. But only
Syrians, not Turks," said one Turkish official at the border where
security has been tightened.
A NATO member with the most powerful army in the area, Turkey has so
far kept out of the U.S.-led coalition, angering many of its own
Kurds who say the policy has abandoned their cousins in Syria to the
wrath of Islamic State fighters.
(Additiona reporting by Sylvia Westall in Beirut, Philip Stewart,
Patricia Zengerle and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by
Sylvia Westall, Peter Graff and Giles Elgood; Editing by Philippa
Fletcher, Peter Cooney and Ken Wills)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
