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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
Wed Sep 24, 2014, 08:14 AM Sep 2014

U.S.: Strikes on Islamic State, Khorasan in Syria first step of a years-long campaign

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/09/23/240785_us-strikes-on-islamic-state-khorasan.html?sp=/99/117/&rh=1



U.S.: Strikes on Islamic State, Khorasan in Syria first step of a years-long campaign
By Mitchell Prothero and Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Foreign Staff
September 23, 2014 Updated 13 hours ago

IRBIL, Iraq — U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria are likely to last “for years,” a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday, as the United States began to assess the impact of three waves of aerial assaults launched in the early morning hours that targeted both Islamic State installations in eastern Syria and facilities housing a shadowy al Qaida group further west.

Outside observers said the attacks, which Pentagon officials said struck 22 targets overall, killed at least 120 jihadi fighters. The dead included at least 70 who were associated with the Islamic State and another 50 who belonged to the al Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front and who were apparently killed in U.S. missile attacks aimed at Nusra’s Khorasan unit, which U.S. officials said was plotting an imminent attack on the West.

But Syrian rebels and media activists said the airstrikes also killed at least 10 civilians when a missile struck a building temporarily housing displaced people in Idlib province. They said that the Islamic State had evacuated many of the buildings and encampments struck in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital.

Activists in another town hit in the U.S.-led offensive, Ash Shadadi, said all of the Islamic State’s bases were empty when bombed.
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