U.S. pounds militant targets in Iraq

2 rounds of bombings hit outside Kurdish city Irbil

Kurdish peshmerga fighters take cover Friday during airstrikes on Islamic militants near the Khazer checkpoint outside Irbil in northern Iraq.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters take cover Friday during airstrikes on Islamic militants near the Khazer checkpoint outside Irbil in northern Iraq.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

DOHUK, Iraq -- The United States on Friday afternoon launched a second round of airstrikes on Sunni militants in northern Iraq, sending four Navy fighter jets to strike eight targets around Irbil, Pentagon officials said.

The attacks came hours after an initial wave of strikes by military aircraft and armed drones were launched a day after President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. military had been authorized to intervene in the country it left in 2011. The U.S. also has sent two shipments of aid to refugees in Iraq.

Defense officials said they believed the second round of attacks Friday resulted in a number of casualties among members of the Islamic State militant group. The Navy fighters took off from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, which has been deployed in the Arabian Sea.

Earlier Friday, two F-18 fighters dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery target that had begun shelling Irbil, the capital of Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region, Pentagon officials said.

"We do believe there were some casualties," the official said about the initial strikes although he wouldn't say how many. He added, "They were shelling Irbil. They're not firing anymore, I'll tell you that."

After Friday's strikes began, the leader of the Islamic State posted a Twitter message that included a link to a video earlier uploaded to YouTube.

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A map showing the location of U. S. forces air strikes targeting extremists in Iraq.

"I address this message to America, the holder of the Cross," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wrote Friday on Twitter.

"Listen up, those who fight on your behalf will not give you any gains in Iraq and Syria," al-Baghdadi said in the video clip. "Soon enough, you will find yourself in a direct confrontation with the sons of Islam, who have prepared themselves well for the day we will fight you."

Obama said Thursday night that he had authorized airstrikes if necessary to break an Islamic State siege that has left tens of thousands of refugees stranded on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. So far, all of the military bombings have been carried out at targets near the Kurdish capital, where the United States has a consulate and where thousands of Americans live.

Defense officials said they expect the strikes to continue as warranted, as part of an effort to slow the momentum of Islamic State militants, who had accelerated their march on Kurdish targets in northern Iraq.

Kurdish officials said the first round of U.S. bombs struck Friday afternoon in and around Makhmour, a town near Irbil.

They also reported an airstrike in the same location Thursday, before the president's announcement, but the Pentagon denied that U.S. warplanes carried out that earlier attack.

Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, have been hard pressed in recent days by the militant fighters, who have seized several towns near Irbil from the Kurds and took control of the Mosul Dam, one of the most important installations in the country.

Many members of religious minority groups in northern Iraq, including Christians, have fled to Kurdish territory to escape the advancing Sunni militants, who have imposed harsh fundamentalist rule in areas they control.

Others have been trapped and besieged by the militants, including tens of thousands of Yazidis, who follow an ancient faith linked to Zoroastrianism and are stranded in a mountainous area to the west. Delivering humanitarian aid to that group is one of the purposes of the U.S. operations in Iraq, Obama said.

Adding to the Yazidis' plight, said Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35 are being held captive by the militants in schools in Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of the captives from their families.

"We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them," Amin said. "We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values."

The U.S. confirmed that the Islamic State group has kidnapped and imprisoned Yazidi women so that they can be sold or married off to extremist fighters, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information came from classified intelligence reports. He had no estimate of the number of women being held.

Aside from the captive women, about 50,000 Yazidis -- half of them children, according to U.N. figures -- remained trapped in the mountains outside Sinjar.

The U.S. said Friday that more than 60 of the 72 bundles of food and water airdropped onto the mountain reached the people stranded there. Early today, the military dropped 72 more bundles of supplies, including more than 28,000 meals and more than 1,500 gallons of water, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

Other countries also announced aid for those who are fleeing the Islamic State.

Britain, a close ally and coalition partner of the United States in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Friday that it would not take part in military action there now but would provide humanitarian aid and technical assistance.

"What we have decided today is to assist the United States in the humanitarian operations that started yesterday," the British defense secretary, Michael Fallon, said Friday in London. "We are offering technical assistance in that, in terms of refueling and surveillance. We are offering aid of our own, which we hope to drop over the next couple of days in support of the American relief effort, particularly to help the plight of those who are trapped on the mountain."

Turkey, a NATO ally that borders northern Iraq, said Friday that it, too, would step up humanitarian aid to the region, news agencies reported.

Pope Francis also is sending a personal envoy to Iraq to show solidarity with Christians who have been forced from their homes by the militants. Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Vatican's ambassador in Baghdad during the Iraqi war, said Friday that his aim will be to offer spiritual help to those forced to flee.

Meanwhile, in response to the fighting, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines and other carriers canceled flights to and from Irbil.

In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration banned American carriers from flying over Iraq, saying hostilities there could threaten safety. British Airways also said it was temporarily suspending flights over Iraq.

The U.S. State Department also warned U.S. citizens against all but essential travel to Iraq and said those in the country were at high risk for kidnapping and terrorist violence.

Contain, not destroy

U.S. officials said Friday that Obama's new military strategy in Iraq aims to contain -- not destroy -- the Islamic State.

Obama has insisted he will not send American ground troops back to Iraq after having withdrawn them in 2011, fulfilling a campaign promise. And Pentagon leaders said Friday that a ground invasion wouldn't be needed.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the military has enough intelligence to clearly single out and hit Islamic militants if they threaten U.S. interests or the refugees on the mountain.

Asked if the Islamic State group could successfully hide among civilians to evade strikes, Hagel said that if the Islamic State moves against Irbil, Baghdad or the refugees, "it's pretty clear who they are, and they would be pretty identifiable where our airstrikes could be effective."

Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said Friday that Gen. Lloyd Austin, who heads U.S. Central Command, has the authority and the assets he needs to order strikes against the militants at any moment.

Beyond airstrikes, the administration has been asked to provide arms directly to the Kurdish forces defending Irbil. Until now, the U.S. has been willing to do that only through the central government in Baghdad, which has long feuded with the Kurdish government.

Michael Barbero, a retired Army general who ran the U.S. training mission in Iraq from 2009 to 2011, said Baghdad never delivered about $200 million worth of American weapons that were designated for the Kurds.

Pentagon officials maintain they can provide arms only to the Iraqi government, although State Department spokesman Marie Harf said Friday that the Kurdish forces play a critical role in the crisis.

"We understand their need for additional arms and equipment and are working to provide those as well so they are reinforced," she said.

The CIA could supply the Kurds under a covert operation, experts said. An agency spokesman declined comment when asked whether that was happening.

Obama drew bipartisan support Friday from members of Congress for his decision to authorize military strikes in Iraq, but the backing was tempered with substantial concern -- including within Obama's own party -- about his strategy for the operation.

Republicans suggested that the administration had acted too slowly and timidly to confront the Islamic State and now was moving too cautiously against the group.

"A policy of containment will not work," Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement. They are among the chief critics of Obama's foreign policy in general, beginning with his decision to stick to the 2011 timetable set by President George W. Bush for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

The Islamic militants are "inherently expansionist and must be stopped," the senators said.

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, accused the president of "parochial thinking" that had emboldened the enemy and "squanders the sacrifices Americans have made."

Meanwhile, Democrats said their opposition to committing U.S. ground forces in Iraq was resolute.

"While the president has existing authority to protect American diplomatic personnel, I remain concerned about U.S. mission creep in Iraq and escalation into a larger conflict, which I oppose," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., who is one of the party's leading anti-war voices on Capitol Hill.

Lee said she backed "strictly humanitarian efforts to prevent a genocide in Iraq," and that the president must ask Congress for authorization for "any further military action" there.

Angela Canterbury, the executive director of the Council for a Livable World and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said the anti-war groups "categorically condemn President Obama's renewed military engagement by the United States in Iraq," adding, "We cannot afford another unwinnable war overseas."

Iraq reaction mixed

In Iraq, Kurdish peshmerga fighters said they were prepared to die to defend their homeland and that the U.S. strikes had reassured them that Washington was not going to abandon them.

"I am not worried, because Obama said that Irbil is a red line," said a rosy-cheeked man who identified himself as Soran, a 28-year-old dual Iraqi-U.K. citizen.

While many Kurds welcomed Obama's announcement of U.S. assistance Friday, the reaction in Baghdad was mixed.

"Obama's speech did not delight Iraqis," said Hakim al-Zamili, a leader of a main Shiite bloc in the parliament, the Sadr faction, who were among the strongest opponents of U.S. involvement in Iraq. "They are looking out for their own interests, not for ours.

"They should have provided Iraq with weapons," he added.

Another Shiite leader, Sami al-Askeri, who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Obama's call for airstrikes had come "too late."

"They should have made this decision when hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis were being killed every day," he said.

Askeri accused the Obama administration of being interested only in "protecting the Kurdish regional government and Christians, not the rest of Iraq."

"Iraqis must rely on themselves and their genuine friends like Iran and Russia, who have supported Iraq in its battle" against the Islamic State, he said.

Russia has sent Sukhoi helicopters to the Iraqi forces, and Iran has trained and financed militia forces and sent advisers.

The Islamic State militants' seizure of two towns within 20 miles of Irbil, which serves as the Kurdish capital, caused panic in the capital Thursday and the beginnings of an exodus of residents to Sulaimaniya, the largest city to the north.

Military leaders believed that if the city emptied, it would be much more vulnerable to a militant attack, officials said privately, asking not to be quoted because they did not want to shake morale.

The bombing appeared to bolster morale Friday in Irbil, at least temporarily, according to people there. Fewer cars could be seen at the city gates attempting to leave, they said.

"The bombing changed the mood of the people," said a peshmerga officer.

Information for this article was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin, Tim Arango, Helene Cooper, Omar Al-Jawoshy, Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times and by Joan Lowy, Sameer N. Yacoub, Vivian Salama, Lolita C. Baldor, Robert Burns, Lara Jakes, Ken Dilanian, Sagar Meghani, Diaa Hadid and staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/09/2014