Photograph: Mazen Mahdi/EPA
The United States and its allies stepped up their war against Islamic State militant group on Monday evening, launching air strikes on targets in Syria.
The Pentagon press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, confirmed that the US and unnamed allied nations sent fighter jets, bomber aircraft and Tomahawk missiles in an operation that he described in a statement as 'ongoing'.
It is rare for the US to confirm a military operation in progress.
Kirby said the strikes were ordered by Army General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US forces in the Middle East and South Asia 'under authorisation granted to him by the commander in chief'.
President Barack Obama met with Austin last week to discuss plans to expand into Syria the air war in Iraq which Obama began on 7 August.
The strikes come months in advance of any support on the ground. With Obama ruling out US ground combat forces for now, there is no capable ground force in eastern Syria to capitalise on the air strikes by seizing territory that Isis has conquered.
The US plan is to train a force of Syrian rebels for that purpose in Saudi Arabia, but the training has not begun yet, and will take at least eight months for the first units to be prepared to rejoin the fight, the Pentagon estimates.
Asked on Friday by the Guardian what an air campaign in Syria can accomplish absent a ground component, Kirby answered: 'What airstrikes would enable us to do is to continue to put pressure on them, particularly the safe havens and sanctuaries that they enjoy in Syria.'
The airstrikes are a long-telegraphed move by the Pentagon, albeit a reluctant one for many senior military officers and the White House. In June, after Isis overran the Iraqi city of Mosul, US defence officials speculated that an American reprisal would likely need to target the group in Syria as well as Iraq to do lasting damage to Isis.
Obama signaled in a televised address on 10 September that he would expand the US war against Isis into Syria, reversing a longstanding caution against militarily involving the US into the bloody confusion of Syria's civil war. Political and media pressure on Obama to launch airstrikes against Isis and then expand the war into Syria has been intense, even as much Capitol Hill skepticism of Obama's war strategy remains.
Post By http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/23/us-launches-air-strikes-against-isis-targets-in-syria
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