Canada conducted airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) positions in Iraq for the first time on Sunday, while reports emerged that the jihadist group had executed more than 200 tribespeople in recent days.
“Today’s strike demonstrates our government’s firm resolve to tackle the threat of terrorism and to stand with our allies against ISIL’s atrocities against innocent women, children and men,” Canadian Defense Minister Rob Nicholson said in a statement, using the acronym for the Islamic State’s previous name, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Canada joined the anti-IS coalition on Thursday and conducted two days of reconnaissance before sending two CF-18s to attack IS positions around the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Photo: AFP
The attacks followed reports that the Sunni militant group had slaughtered dozens of people from the Albu Nimr tribe, which had taken up arms against the insurgents. Women and children were said to be among those executed over the past 10 days in western Iraq’s Anbar Province, which has been largely overrun by the group.
Iraq is bracing for yet more violence in the coming days as hundreds of thousands of Shiites prepare to travel to shrines in Karbala for a major annual pilgrimage.
Like other Sunni extremists, IS considers Shiites to be heretics and frequently attacks them, posing a major threat to the Ashura religious commemorations that peak today and will be a major test for the new government headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.
IS is expected to target Ashura pilgrims, two car bombs targeting Shiites in Baghdad killed at least 19 people on Sunday, officials said, while a city center car bombing killed at least five.
Accounts varied as to the number and timings of the executions in Anbar, but all sources spoke of more than 200 people murdered.
Police Colonel Shaaban al-Obaidi told reporters that more than 200 people were killed, Anbar Provincial Council deputy head Faleh al-Essawi put the toll at 258.
The killings are probably aimed at discouraging resistance among the province’s powerful local tribes.
IS also detained dozens of members of the Jubur tribe in Salaheddin Province, north of Baghdad, officials and a tribal leader said.
Jubur tribespeople and security forces have been holding out for months against IS in Dhuluiyah.
Pro-government forces have suffered a string of setbacks in Anbar recently, prompting warnings that the province, which stretches from the borders with Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the western approach to Baghdad, could fall entirely.
On the Syria-Turkey border, about 150 Iraqi-Kurdish peshmerga fighters were preparing to bolster fellow Kurds in battling IS for the town of Kobane, after crossing the frontier late on Friday.
Syrian Kurdish militia have held off an IS offensive there for more than six weeks and Kobane has become a crucial symbol in the anti-IS struggle.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported fierce clashes in the town’s center, north, south and Kurdish fighters shelling IS positions to its east.
Prior to Canada’s airstrikes, the US-led coalition against IS carried out at least three air raids near Kobane on Sunday, the observatory said. At least 11 militants were killed in those strikes and fighting on Saturday, it said.
Canada declined to detail damage caused in its approximately four-hour mission. Details are expected at a news conference today.
Elsewhere in Syria, IS fighters yesterday said they had taken a gas field in Homs Province.
The group, which now holds up to one-third of Syria and took the larger Sha’ar gas field on Thursday, posted 18 photographs on social media showing its flag raised in the Jahar gas field, as well as seized vehicles and weaponry, according to the SITE extremist Web site monitoring service.
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