LATEST: French Jets Carry Out 1st Strikes on Islamic State

At least 23 people were killed and 56 wounded by three suicide car bombs and mortar attacks in Baghdad on Thursday.

The bombs in the Shia neighborhood of Kadhimiya were followed by 12 mortar rounds fired from outside the district.

The Islamic State is believed to be responsible for the latest attacks.

The jihadists have advanced through northern and western Iraq since June, but are facing the pressure of an Iraqi-Kurdish counter-offensive supported by US aerial intervention.

American warplanes struck Islamic State positions near Baghdad for the first time earlier this week.

See Iraq Daily, Sept 16: US Airstrikes Move Near Baghdad

Sources said attackers targeted the Adala Prison in Kadhimiya in an attempted breakout of detainees. The Iraqi military claimed the attempt was foiled. Another attack in the Iskan neighborhood appeared to target the offices of the Shi’a political group and militia, the Badr Organization.

The bombings broke a period of several weeks in the capital without a large-scale, coordinated assault.

(Featured Photo: Site of a car bomb in Baghdad, September 10, 2014)


French Jets Carry Out 1st Strikes

French jets carried out their first airstrikes against the Islamic State on Friday.

France is the first foreign country to join the US in aerial attacks in Iraq since the Americans began operations on August 8.

The office of President Francois Hollande said, “This morning at 9:40, our Rafale planes carried out a first strike against a logistics depot of the terrorist organisation Daesh [Islamic State] in northeast Iraq. The objective was hit and completely destroyed.”

A French military official said four laser-guided bombs struck the Iraqi military installation that had been overrun by the militants, striking the depot for munitions and fuel.

A spokesman for the Iraqi military said the attack took place near Zumar in northern Iraq. Islamic State forces took the town at the start of Iraq, but Kurdish forces have counter-attacked and claimed that they reoccupied the area at the start of September.

The statement promised, “Other operations will follow in the coming days.”

The head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has been in France for meetings with his counterpart, General Pierre de Villiers. The two men were visiting an American military cemetery in Normandy when the French strike took place.