A United Arab Emirates fighter pilot
Worries over rescues had grounded nation’s airstrikes against Islamic State
mans an F-16 on Tuesday at an air base in Jordan in this photo from the UAE news agency WAM. Planes from UAE carried out airstrikes against Islamic State positions for the first time in weeks in a show of support for Jordan.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — United Arab Emirates fighter planes roared out of an air base in Jordan on Tuesday to pound Islamic State militant positions, marking a return to combat operations by one of the United States’ closest Arab allies in the fight against the extremists.
The Emirates’ decision to launch fresh airstrikes from the kingdom after a hiatus of more than a month was a show of support for Western-allied Jordan, which has vowed a punishing response to the militants’ killing of one of its pilots.
The Emirates stopped conducting airstrikes late last year after Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh was captured when his plane crashed behind enemy lines, American officials said. Al-Kaseasbeh was later burned alive in a cage by the militants.
American defense officials last week said they moved search-and-rescue aircraft closer to the battlefield, helping to ease allies’ concerns about the ability to aid downed pilots from the coalition that is fighting the Islamic State.
The General Command of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces said Emirati F-16s carried out a series of strikes Tuesday morning, according to a brief statement carried by the Persian Gulf nation’s official WAM news agency.
The fighters returned safely back to base after striking their targets, the statement said. It did not elaborate, nor did it say whether the strikes happened in Syria or Iraq. The militants hold roughly a third of each country in a self-declared caliphate, or state ruled by Islamic law.
Previous Emirati airstrikes had been in Syria.
The Emirates did not comment on the suspension of airstrikes in December. It had continued to provide logistical support to the campaign by hosting coalition warplanes at its air bases on the southern rim of the Persian Gulf.
On Saturday, the Emirates announced that it was deploying a squadron of F-16s to Jordan. But Tuesday’s statement was the first confirmation it had restarted combat operations.
Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a professor of political science at Emirates University, said the decision to resume flights from Jordan was meant to “send the right message to everybody that the UAE stands by its friends in times of need.”
He predicted the Emirati role in the coalition would be even stronger than before now that it has American assurances about search-and-rescue capabilities.
“It’s a relentless campaign, and it has to be carried out until Daesh is defeated,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “I think the UAE firmly believes this, probably more than any other Arab county.”
The Emirati announcement came as Syria’s President Bashar Assad said in comments published Tuesday that his government has been receiving general messages from the American military about airstrikes targeting the Islamic State inside Syria but that there is no direct cooperation.
In an interview with the BBC, Assad said the messages are conveyed through third parties, such as Iraq.
“Sometimes they convey message, general message, but there’s nothing tactical,” he said.
American and allied Arab planes conducting airstrikes in Syria share the skies with Assad’s air force, which also targets the militants.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there has been no coordination as to specific details of U.S. military operations in Syria.
Before initiating strikes in Syria, the U.S. did “inform the Syrian regime through the ambassador to the United Nations,” Earnest said. “What was made clear in that communication is that it’s the responsibility of the Syrian government, to put it bluntly, to stay out of the way,” he added.
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials said foreign fighters are streaming into Syria and Iraq in unprecedented numbers to join the Islamic State or other extremist groups, including at least 3,400 from Western nations among 20,000 from around the world.
Intelligence agencies now believe that as many as 150 Americans have tried and some have succeeded in reaching the Syrian war zone, officials wrote in prepared testimony to be delivered to the House Homeland Security Committee today. Some of those Americans were arrested en route, some died in the area and a few are still fighting with extremists.
Nick Rasmussen, chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, said the rate of foreign fighter travel to Syria is without precedent, far exceeding the rate of foreigners who went to wage jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any other point in the past 20 years.
U.S. officials fear that some of the foreign fighters will return undetected to their homes in Western countries to mount terrorist attacks.
Australian authorities said today that two men in Sydney were charged with planning to launch an imminent terrorist attack, after police seized a homemade flag associated with the Islamic State, a machete and a hunting knife in a counterterrorism raid.
The men, aged 24 and 25, would have carried out the attack Tuesday if they had not been arrested that day, police said. They were trying to determine whether the men were in contact with anyone from the Islamic State.
Australia’s government raised the country’s terror warning level in September in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of the Islamic State, which has threatened Australia in the past.
The government believes that about 90 Australians are fighting alongside the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, with another 140 supporting the group from Australia.