The US-led coalition has carried out fresh air strikes against militants in Syria and Iraq as Washington called for the battle against the Islamic State (IS) to be taken to the Internet.
Fighting continued to rage for the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane and in Iraq a car bomb explosion on Monday killed at least eight people in a Baghdad square after a suicide bombing reportedly left at least 14 pro-government fighters dead south of the capital.
A reporter in Turkey just across the border from Kobane said fierce clashes were raging in the strategic Syrian town, where Kurdish fighters have been holding off an offensive by Islamic State militants for weeks.
Photo: Reuters
The US military said its warplanes carried out four more air strikes near Kobane on Sunday and Monday.
As the fighting intensifies, the Pentagon revised up its estimate of the cost of the air war, saying the price tag for the campaign was about US$8.3 million a day, but there was still no sign of promised reinforcements for Kobane’s defenders, despite plans announced last week for Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces armed with heavy weapons to join them.
A senior Iraqi Kurdish official said the deployment was being held up by Turkey, which has agreed to allow the peshmerga to pass through its territory.
“We are ready to send them,” said Mustafuz Qader, who heads the ministry responsible for the peshmerga.
Kobane has become a symbol in the battle against the Islamic State, an extremist Sunni group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, declared an Islamic “caliphate” and committed widespread atrocities.
Washington has forged an alliance of Western and Arab nations to combat the group, and on Monday met with coalition partners in Kuwait City to boost efforts to counter the militants’ online propaganda.
Retired US general John Allen, who is coordinating the US-led campaign against the Islamic State, said the group was promoting its “horrendous brand of warfare” online, where it “recruits and perverts the innocent.”
“It is only when we contest ISIL’s presence online, deny the legitimacy of the message it sends to vulnerable young people... it is only then that ISIL will truly be defeated,” Allen said.
The coalition partners pledged to take steps to boost efforts to prevent the recruitment of foreign fighters for the Islamic State, including online.
Concern is growing over the group’s online influence in attracting foreign fighters and promoting attacks by disaffected Muslims on Western targets.
The US military said the coalition had also carried out seven new strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq on Sunday and Monday, including near the key Mosul dam and southeast of the militant bastion of Fallujah.
Since air strikes began on Aug. 8, the campaign — which has involved about 6,600 sorties by US and allied aircraft — has cost US$580 million, Pentagon spokesman Commander Bill Urban said.
The US Department of Defense had previously put the average daily cost of the military operation at more than US$7 million a day.
The higher figure reflected the increased pace of air strikes and related flights, a US defense official said, but independent analysts said the US Department of Defense is underestimating the genuine cost of the war effort.
Some former budget officials and outside experts estimate the cost of the war has already exceeded US$1 billion and that it could rise to several billion in a year’s time.
Iraq has struggled to regain territory taken by the Islamic State in a lightning offensive in June, though it announced at the weekend that its forces had retaken the town of Jurf al-Sakhr south of Baghdad.
Sources said on Monday a suicide bomber had subsequently detonated an explosives-rigged Humvee armored vehicle near security forces and allied militiamen in the area, killing at least 14, while a car bomb exploded in Baghdad’s busy Wathiq Square on Monday night, killing at least eight people.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels were reported to have launched a major assault on the government-held city of Idlib in a bid to consolidate their control over the country’s northwest.
Fighters of the al-Nusra Front and other rebel units attacked the city from all sides from dawn on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The rise of the Islamic State has destabilized the region, including in Syria’s neighbor Lebanon, where weekend clashes killed at least 16 people and forced thousands to flee a neighborhood of second city Tripoli.
Lebanese soldiers quelled the militants in their Tripoli stronghold of Bab al-Tebbaneh and were in full control on Monday, earning praise for their courage from the US.
“We condemn those who seek to sow chaos in Lebanon and are confident that the Lebanese people will persevere if they stand united in the face of this threat,” US Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
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