(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The United States yesterday carried out its first air strike on an Islamic State target in Syria after taking off from a Turkish air base, as Turkey vowed it was ready to step up its own fight against jihadists.
"A US drone today carried out one air strike in Syria near Raqa," a Turkish official told AFP, referring to the town in northern Syria that the IS group sees as its capital.
The drone had taken off from Turkey's southern Incirlik air base, which Ankara has now opened to the US military for armed attacks on IS targets in Syria just 200 kilometres away, the source added. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier announced that Turkey was ready to begin a "comprehensive" fight against IS jihadists in Syria alongside the United States, after months of staying on the sidelines of the US-led coalition.
The Pentagon announced this week that US armed drones had taken off from Incirlik to conduct missions over northern Syria, but this was the first time an air strike had been carried out.
Turkey, a member of the international coalition led by its NATO ally Washington, had so far declined to take robust action against jihadists but after a deadly bombing in July in a border town blamed on suspected IS jihadists, it launched limited strikes against the group in Syria.
According to media reports, some 30 US fighter jets are due to arrive at the facility in the next days in order to take part in the operation. Turkey, long criticised for failing to stop the flow of jihadists to-and-fro across its border with Syria, has so far concentrated an almost two-week "anti-terror" campaign on the bombing of Kurdish militants.
But Cavusoglu indicated after meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry in Malaysia that Turkey would be stepping up its campaign against IS jihadists.
"The US planes have begun arriving and soon we will launch a comprehensive fight against Daesh all together," he said, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for IS, quoted by the official Anatolia news agency.
Ankara is waging a two-pronged bombing campaign against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels as well as IS militants, following a wave of violence inside Turkey.
But so far the raids have overwhelmingly targeted the Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey, and opponents have criticised Ankara for using the anti-IS offensive as a cover to bomb Kurdish militants in northern Iraq.
"Turkey does not need an excuse to protect its national security," the Turkish official told AFP, saying that Ankara sees both IS and the PKK as a threat.
"In Iraq, we can take unilateral action but in the fight against Daesh we are a member of an international coalition," the
official said.
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