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On Friday, France conducted its first air strike on the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, augmenting strikes conducted by the United States strikes and boosting its efforts to unite global powers against the threat the extremists pose.
After France famously refused to participate in the US-led invasion of the Iraq in 2003, it became the first country to join the US in its current aerial campaign in Iraq.
“This morning at 9:40, our Rafale planes carried out a first strike against a logistics depot of the terrorist organization (IS)”, French President Francois Hollande said.
His office also said that their target was in north-eastern Iraq, although they did not specify the exact location, only adding, “The objective was hit and completely destroyed”.
According to sources in French Defense Ministry, two jets dropped GBU-12 bombs in the Mosul region. Halgord Hekmat, a spokesman for the Kurdish military, identified the location of the strikes as Tal Mus, which lies between the cities of Zumar and Mosul. He also said that the Kurdish forces were happy that France had started its aerial campaign.
France and the UK have sent aircraft into Iraqi skies for surveillance, but Friday’s strike was France’s first attack on the extremists.
US aircraft have conducted over 170 strikes since August 8th, but US President Barack Obama has eager to build an international coalition against the IS. The campaign was initially launched to protect the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region from the advancing extremists and attempt to help its troops regain territory they had lost.
Islamic State extremists, who were already in control of territory in neighboring Syria, started their military offensive and seized Iraq’s second city Mosul on June 10th, sweeping through most of the Sunni heartland. They soon launched a second offensive in August, dealing Iraq’s Kurdish Peshmerga forces several military defeats and attacking various minority groups, destroying heritage sites and effectively displacing several hundreds of thousands in the process.