This Article is From Sep 26, 2014

A Small Step Forward as Warplanes Strike Militants' Refineries in Syria

A Small Step Forward as Warplanes Strike Militants' Refineries in Syria

A member of Islamic State group waves a flag in Iraq (Reuters)

Washington: Warplanes from the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday attacked what military officials believe were the majority of the Islamic State's oil refineries in Syria as part of the continuing effort to target sources of the terrorist group's financing, Pentagon officials said.

The strikes on the 12 small refineries came on the third day of the American-led air campaign in Syria, and early reports indicated that the attacks had crippled the plants in the eastern provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah, Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said at a news conference.

He played a video and displayed aerial photographs of the strikes, which in at least one case left a refinery tower standing while destroying the buildings around it.

Still, Kirby and other defense officials acknowledged shortcomings in the budding effort to roll back gains by the Islamic State, particularly given that there were no plans to send in US troops to capitalize on airstrikes.

"We get caught up in the immediacy of these airstrikes," Kirby said, "but this is going to take time, and nobody here in this building is not unaware of that."

The strikes in Syria have been more intense than the attacks against Islamic State targets in Iraq, and the targets are different, too. In Iraq, US planes have, for the most part, bombed artillery positions, convoys and even individual patrol boats. The attacks in Syria have been concentrated on the Islamic State's command and control structures and the sources of its revenues.

Officials with US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, said the refineries produced 300 to 500 barrels of oil daily, generating as much as $2 million per day in black-market oil sales for the group's operations. That estimate is higher than US officials had previously made public, and would put the price around $333 per barrel. Oil sells for about $100 a barrel on the open market.

The Islamic State "is an organization that has both tooth and tail," Kirby said, using the military terms for war fighters (tooth) and command, finance and logistical support (tail). "In Iraq, we've gone after their teeth. In Syria, we're trying to cut off their tail."

Defense officials said the attacks on Thursday involved six US planes and 10 from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Kirby said. On Monday, the first day of the strikes, most of the bombing was done by American planes.

Attacks also continued Thursday in Iraq, where American forces conducted 11 airstrikes on Islamic State fighters, armed vehicles, Humvees, a fighting position, four checkpoints, two guard towers and a command post west of Baghdad, according to Central Command. Iraqi security forces have worked with the Americans there, but their performance has been "mixed," a military official said.

Kirby said the Pentagon would investigate reports that civilians have been killed in the Syrian strikes, but he said U.S. and coalition pilots and war planners took pains to carry out the attacks with precision. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said that the raids against the oil refineries had killed 14 militants as well as five civilians, including a child.

"We are aware of some reporting out there that there may have been civilian casualties, and we are taking a look at that," Kirby said.

Defense officials said that about 500 soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division will deploy to the region, and about 200 of them will be sent to joint operations centers in Irbil, in Kurdish-controlled Iraq, and Baghdad.

The strikes have done little to impede the advance of the Islamic State on Kurdish villages near the Turkish border, where tens of thousands of people have fled, fearing a massacre. Artillery and heavy machine-gun fire could be heard from the border here in southern Turkey, sounding closer later in the day.

Kurdish militants defending the area said they were able to push the Islamic State back a few miles, but issued a statement urging the U.S.-led coalition to prove they "are serious" by striking the Islamic State there, offering to provide targeting coordinates.

Such help could prove to be a delicate matter in relations with Turkey, an American ally and NATO member that has remained vague about how it will participate in the fight against the Islamic State. Turkey views the Kurdish militants - who are affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey, known as the PKK, which Turkey and the United States list as a terrorist group - with suspicion because of the longtime tensions between the Turkish government and its own Kurdish population.

Redur Xeli, a spokesman for the People's Protection Units, the Kurdish fighters in Syria, also known as the YPG, said the group had only light weapons and was outgunned by Islamic State. He said that the Islamic State's weapons, vehicles and equipment "are in open air and visible to everyone, but yet they haven't been targeted by the airstrikes."

"If the U.S. and their alliance are serious," he added, the YPG is "willing to cooperate."

A member of the Islamic State's de facto local administration in the town of Qourieh said that the group's headquarters had been evacuated last night, not long before it was hit by an airstrike.
"The brothers have taken a new path," he said. "They decided to change the way they operate."

He added, "It's almost impossible to know where the brothers are. They disappeared, they became ghosts, their heavy weapons disappeared. Now they are only around Deir al-Zour airport and near the front lines."

The scene was calmer on the Turkish side of the border, where waves of Syrian Kurdish refugees and Turkish Kurds have arrived wanting to enter Syria to join the fight.

But from a village near the border fence, the black flag of the Islamic State could be seen flying from a hillock. Jumaa Ali, 49, said he had watched a man they suspected was an Islamic State militant climb into a border watchtower. He said Kurdish villagers were waiting for him to climb down in the hope of shooting him.

"It's dangerous now to live in this village," he said, then added with a laugh, "but we can cut heads, too."

Nearby, masked men checked cars. Residents said they were local Kurds who were extorting goods from Syrian Kurdish refugees as they made their way into Turkey.

About a mile away, as police checked refugees' bags for weapons, Selin Unal, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency said that Turkey had accepted as many Syrian refugees since last Friday as Europe had throughout the three-year war. "This is a huge responsibility on Turkey," she said.

© 2014, The New York Times News Service
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