The United States launched several airstrikes against ISIS targets inside Syria for the first time late Monday in what a defense official said was a "successful" start in a new front in the battle against the terror group and, separately, in potentially averting an imminent threat to the homeland from a shadowy al Qaeda group.
While the United States is still "assessing the effectiveness" of the bombing campaign against ISIS, which included up to 20 targets, the Pentagon believes “that we were successful in hitting what we were aiming at,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
"We took out command-and-control facilities, supply depots, some training areas, some vehicles and trucks, that kind of thing. Mainly, what we were going after was this group's ability to sustain itself, to resource itself and to, frankly, command and control and lead their forces,” Kirby told “Good Morning America,” referring to ISIS.
Many of the targets were in and around Raqqa, Syria, believed to be an ISIS stronghold, a defense official said Monday. Several Arab nations took part in the U.S.-led operation: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. military's Central Command said early today.
Separately, the U.S. military unilaterally launched eight strikes against the Khorasan Group, a little-known al Qaeda cell that Kirby said was “plotting and planning imminent attacks against Western targets to include the U.S. homeland.”
“It was on that basis that we struck targets, Khorasan targets, inside Syria. We believe the individuals [who] were plotting and planning it have been eliminated and we’re going to continue, as I said, to assess the effectiveness of our strikes going through today,” he said.
More:http://abcnews.go.com/International/airstrikes-successful-isis-targets-syria-us-military/story?id=25686031
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