UPDATE 1625 GMT: President Obama’s statement on Saturday afternoon restating the reasons for US airstrikes against the Islamic State and aerial relief efforts for Iraqi refugees:
Obama emphasized the need for the formation of a new Government in Baghdad to accompany the American intervention, but pointed to a long-term effort:
All Iraqi communities are ultimately threatened by these barbaric terrorists and all Iraqi communities need to unite to defend their country. Only Iraqis can ensure the stability of Iraq….
I don’t think we are going to solve this problem in weeks, it is going to take some time.
The US has acknowledged its first airstrikes on Islamic State jihadists in northwest Iraq.
Following strikes on Thursday — still unclaimed by any force — on the Islamic State and President Obama’s statement that night authorizing both US attacks and aerial relief efforts to refugees, the Pentagon said yesterday that three missions had been carried out.
The US military has conducted air strikes against Islamic State fighters near the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, the US Defence Department has said.
The initial statement said two F/A-18 warplanes dropped laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece and the truck pulling it, which the jihadists intended to use “to shell Kurdish forces defending (the Iraqi Kurdistan capital) Erbilm where US personnel are located”.
Later, another statement said an unmanned drone hit a jihadist mortar position: “When Islamic State fighters returned to the site moments later, the terrorists were attacked again and successfully eliminated.”
The casualties were the first claimed by the Americans.
A third mission was carried out by four F/A-18 fighters which dropped eight bombs on a stationary convoy of seven vehicles and a mortar position near Erbil.
So far, the Islamic State has made no apparent response to the US intervention.
The US began airdrops of food and water on Thursday to tens of thousands of Iraqis — mainly members of the Yazidi faith — who fled to a barren mountainside after the Islamic State captured the city of Sinjar last week in northwest Iraq.
The jihadists continued their advance with the occupation of a series of towns as Kurdish forces withdrew. By Thursday, the Islamic State had moved within 30 miles of Erbil, prompting the American intervention.
The Kurdish website Rudaw has posted video and photographs of the relief airdrops:
