Russia casts doubt on legitimacy of US strikes
RUSSIA’S Foreign Ministry said yesterday the legitimacy of US air strikes against Islamic State are in doubt because of the lack of approval from its ally Syria, where some of the strikes are being carried out, and the United Nations (UN).
“There is doubt over the legitimacy of the strikes as such actions can only be carried out with the approval of the UN and the unequivocal permission of the authorities of the country where they are taking place, which in this case is the government in Damascus,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Russia has said air strikes against the radical Sunni group that has taken over wide swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria must be agreed with Damascus.
Moscow has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his fight against rebels and sees his survival as a major foreign policy success.
It now wants to see the West implicitly acknowledging his legitimacy by dealing with him directly.
Russia has not responded publicly to US calls to build an international coalition to destroy Islamic State. A Kremlin spokesman said President Vladimir Putin had discussed possible cooperation on countering Islamic State with “partners” as long as it was within the framework of international law.
US planes pounded Islamic State positions in Syria for a second day yesterday but the strikes did not halt the fighters’ advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told of villages burnt and captives beheaded.
President Barack Obama, speaking at the UN, asked the world to join together to fight the militants and vowed to keep up military pressure against them.
“The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force, so the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death,” Obama said.
Islamist militants in Algeria claimed in a video they had executed a French hostage captured on Sunday to demand that France end its involvement in air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, according to the Site monitoring service. A US official said the leader of an al Qaeda unit called Khorasan had been killed in the first day of strikes on Syria. Washington describes Khorasan as a separate group from Islamic State, made up of al Qaeda veterans planning attacks from a base in Syria.
“We believe he is dead,” he said of Khorasan chief Mohsin al-Fadhli, an associate of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
Syrian Kurds said Islamic State had responded to US attacks by intensifying its assault near the Turkish border in northern Syria, where 140,000 civilians have fled in recent days in the fastest exodus of the three-year civil war.
Washington and Arab allies have killed scores of Islamic State fighters in the first 24 hours of air strikes, the first direct US foray into Syria two weeks after Obama pledged to hit the group on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.
However, the intensifying advance on the northern town of Kobani was a reminder of the difficulty Washington faces in defeating Islamist fighters in Syria, where it lacks strong military allies on the ground.
“Those air strikes are not important. We need soldiers on the ground,” said Hamed, a refugee who fled into Turkey from the Islamic State advance.
Mazlum Bergaden, a teacher from Kobani who crossed the border yes- terday with his family, said two of his brothers had been taken captive by Islamic State fighters.
“The situation is very bad. After they kill people, they are burning the villages.... When they capture any village, they behead one person to make everyone else afraid,” he said. “They are trying to eradicate our culture, purge our nation.” Fighting between Islamic State
When they capture a village, they behead a person to make everyone else afraid. They are trying to eradicate our culture
militants and Kurds could be seen from across the border in Turkey, where the sounds of sporadic artillery and gunfire echoed around the hills.
The initial days of US strikes suggest one aim is to hamper Islamic State’s ability to operate across the Iraqi-Syrian frontier. Yesterday US-led forces hit at least 13 targets in and around Albu Kamal, one of the main border crossings between Iraq and Syria, after striking 22 targets there on Tuesday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict.
The US military confirmed it had struck inside Syria northwest of al Qaim, the Iraqi town at the Albu Kamal border crossing. It also struck inside Iraq west of Baghdad and near the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil yesterday.
An Islamist fighter in the Albu Kamal area said there were at least nine strikes yesterday by “crusader forces“. Targets included an industrial area.
Perched on the main Euphrates River valley highway, Albu Kamal controls the route from Islamic State’s de facto capital Raqqa in Syria to the frontlines in western Iraq and down the Euphrates River to the western and southern outskirts of Baghdad.
Islamic State’s ability to move fighters and weapons between Syria and Iraq has provided an important tactical advantage for the group in both countries: fighters sweeping in from Syria helped capture much of northern Iraq in June, and weapons they seized and sent back to Syria helped them in battle there.