US-led Air Raids Target ISIL Positions, Including an Oil Field

Saturday 8 November 2014

US-led Air Raids Target ISIL Positions, Including an Oil Field

Source

US-led air raids hit positions related to the so-called ISIL terrorist group in the north and east of Syria, including an oil field, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday.

US strikes

“Four explosions were heard during the night in Deir Ezzor province (eastern Syria), caused by US-Arab air strikes in the area of the Tanak oil field and an ISIL checkpoint... killing two people," said the Observatory.

The Britain-based monitoring group said it was unclear whether the casualties were militants or civilians.

The airstrikes were reportedly conducted in response to the militants’ shelling of a camp where displaced people from the Syrian town of Kobani are currently residing.

The arrival of the Iraqi Kurd peshmerga, or "those who face death," with armored vehicles and artillery, has enabled them to shell ISIL positions around Kobani and take back some villages.

The peshmerga entered Kobani in more than a dozen trucks and jeeps last Friday from Turkey and were given a heroes' welcome by Turkish Kurds and Syrian Kurdish refugees, angry at Turkey's refusal to send in its own troops.

The Kurdistan Regional Government, which runs a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, has made clear from the outset that its peshmerga fighters, numbering around 150, would not engage in direct combat in Kobani but rather provide artillery support to Syrian Kurds.

"Of course the presence of the peshmerga has been helpful because they’re shelling ISIL positions, destroying their fighters and weapons," Idris Nassan, a local official in Kobani, said by telephone. "Because of the peshmerga shelling we've stopped ISIL advances in the western rural areas as well as the east and southeastern front line of the city," he told Reuters.