DAMASCUS/MURSITPINAR Turkey (Reuters) – US and coalition planes pounded Islamic State positions in Syria again yesterday, but the strikes did not halt the fighters’ advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told of villages burnt and captives beheaded.
US President Barack Obama, speaking at the United Nations, asked the world to join together to fight the militants and vowed to keep up military pressure against them.
“The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force, so the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death,” Obama said in 40-minute speech to the UN General Assembly.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said he wanted Britain to join US-led air strikes against the Islamic State militant group after the Iraqi government requested London’s help. He recalled parliament to secure its approval for military action.
Cameron said in an address at the United Nations that a comprehensive strategy was needed to combat Islamic State.
“Our strategy must work in tandem with Arab states, always in support of local people, in line with our legal obligations and as part of a plan that involves our aid, our diplomacy and, yes, our military,” Cameron said. “We need to act and we need to act now.”
A third night of US-led air strikes late on Wednesday targeted Islamic State-controlled oil refineries in eastern Syria as the United States and its partners moved to choke off a crucial source of revenue for the militant group, US officials said.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined in the strikes by piloted and drone aircraft targeting facilities around al Mayadin, al Hasakah, and Abu Kamal, the US military said.
The military said the targeted refineries, which are prefabricated and constructed off-site so they can be transported and made operational quickly, were capable of producing millions in revenue and provided fuel for Islamic State operations.
The United States yesterday also designated two dozen individuals and groups as foreign terrorists or terrorist facilitators, enabling it to freeze assets and block financial transactions as part of its offensive against Islamic State.
Syrian Kurds said Islamic State had responded to US attacks by intensifying its assault near the Turkish border in northern Syria, where 140,000 civilians have fled in recent days in the fastest exodus of the three-year civil war.
Washington and its Arab allies killed scores of Islamic State fighters in the opening 24 hours of air strikes, the first direct US foray into Syria two weeks after Obama pledged to hit the group on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.
But the intensifying advance on the northern town of Kobani showed the difficulty Washington faces in defeating Islamist fighters in Syria, where it lacks strong military allies on the ground.
“Those air strikes are not important. We need soldiers on the ground,” said Hamed, a refugee who fled into Turkey from the Islamic State advance.
Mazlum Bergaden, a teacher from Kobani who crossed the border yesterday with his family, said two of his brothers had been taken captive by Islamic State fighters.
“The situation is very bad. After they kill people, they are burning the villages. … When they capture any village, they behead one person to make everyone else afraid,” he said. “They are trying to eradicate our culture, purge our nation.”
Islamist militants in Algeria boasted in a video they had beheaded a French hostage captured on Sunday to punish Paris for joining air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq. French President Francois Hollande confirmed the execution.
