Jordan says its airstrikes are targeting Islamic State leadership and living quarters. (Raqqa).
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s air force has carried out 56 airstrikes against Islamic State weapons depots and training camps in Syria and Iraq in the days since the extremist group revealed it had burned a Jordanian pilot to death, Jordanian military officials said Sunday.
A top Jordanian air force commander vowed that his country will continue its offensive until the Islamist militants are “wiped off the face of the Earth.”
A “strike” can, however, include a number of buildings in the same place. The Jordanians want to kill the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said Maj. Gen. Mansour Jabour of the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
“We are hitting them where they eat and sleep,” he said.On Friday, the group said that Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old Arizona woman it had taken hostage in Syria, was killed when a Jordanian fighter plane bombed a building where she was being held.
The assertion could not be immediately verified, nor was it clear that Jordanian planes had bombed the location. The Islamic State has not produced her body or other evidence that she was killed in the strike.
“We did not target any civilian homes, we did not cut a single tree, and we did not destroy any home in any residential area or even in the surrounding areas,” Jabour said Sunday.
According to Jabour, Jordanian fighter jets have taken part in 946 of 5,500 bombing runs by the U.S.-led coalition since September, accounting for 17 percent of the coalition’s air power.
Meanwhile, President Obama’s special presidential envoy, retired Marine Gen. John Allen, arrived in Amman late Sunday to meet with Abdullah and senior military officials.
Also Sunday, the Jordanian monarch met with Britain’s Prince Charles, who pledged his country’s support for Jordan’s efforts to tackle terrorism, according to a Royal Court statement carried by Petra.Read the full story here.
No comments:
Post a Comment