France to air strike jihadists in Iraq
France yesterday said that it will follow the United States in launching air strikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq.
The French move came as Washington was set to approve plans to train and arm Syrian rebels in the fight against IS, which has gained more ground in recent days.
President Francois Hollande underlined that there would be no French air strikes against IS targets in Syria like those that his US counterpart Barack Obama authorised last week.
"I decided to respond to the request of the Iraqi authorities to offer aerial support," Hollande told reporters.
"We will not go further than that. There will be no ground troops and we will only intervene in Iraq."
The US has carried out 174 air strikes against IS in Iraq since early August, and Obama last week authorised their expansion to neighbouring Syria.
France began reconnaissance flights over Iraq on Monday from a base in the United Arab Emirates. Britain too has conducted surveillance flights but has so far held back from launching strikes.
The US Senate was expected to back a plan, approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, to train and equip anti-jihadist rebels in Syria, a key part of Obama's strategy against IS.
Who exactly will benefit from the programme is unclear, as the rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad lack a clear command structure and range from secular nationalists to al-Qaeda-backed extremists.
Meanwhile, local activists said IS jihadists in a Syrian stronghold near Iraq have abandoned some bases and redeployed their forces and armour from other positions, with the US military poised to strike.
The Islamic State group (IS) has "started to empty out many of their bases and positions in Deir Ezzor province," said Abu Osama, an activist from the eastern region mostly under jihadist control.
In Syria, IS fighters were closing in on the country's third-largest Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab, or Kobane, on the Turkish border, cutting off its Kurdish militia defenders, a monitoring group said.
The town is one of three Kurdish majority districts where Kurdish nationalists have proclaimed self-rule and its capture would give the jihadists control of a large swathe of the Turkish border.
The exiled opposition National Coalition warned of "the danger of a massacre" in the area, where Kurdish militia have put up dogged resistance to the jihadists.
The US estimates that IS has 20,000 to 31,000 fighters, including many foreigners, and there are concerns that returning jihadists could carry out attacks in Western countries.
Australia said it had detained 15 people in connection with a plot to behead random civilians, in the country's largest ever counter-terrorism raids.
IS smaller global threat than Qaeda
But analysts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) warned against overestimating the IS threat, saying that al-Qaeda's global network was still the bigger danger worldwide.
"Despite its spectacular acts of violence, including against Westerners, (IS's) short- and medium-term objectives appear to be local and transnational rather than global," the London-based think-tank said.
Analyst Emile Hokayem told a news conference: "We shouldn't exaggerate its potency. It is a very serious security threat to the region -- as a global threat it's still limited."
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