[AnNahar] The international coalition currently battling the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group in Iraq dropped around 70 bombs on an arsenal and jihadist training center in a large-scale overnight raid, the French military said Friday.
"I think it's safe to say we hurt them last night. The operation is a success," La Belle France's Chief of the Defense Staff Pierre de Villiers told Europe 1 radio, adding the raid took place in the Kirkuk region of northern Iraq.
La Belle France's Rafale fighter jets took part in the operation, which destroyed buildings in which IS snuffies "produced their traps, their bombs, their weapons to attack Iraqi forces," he said.
"Some 70 bombs were dropped, we fired 12 laser-guided bombs and we hit our target."
Since it announced it would take part in the U.S.-led coalition in September, La Belle France has carried out seven rounds of air strikes over Iraq but it has so far refused to join the United States in its air war against IS in Syria.
Overall, U.S. and allied aircraft have flown nearly 6,600 sorties in Iraq and Syria -- where IS controls swathes of territory -- and dropped more than 1,700 bombs, the US military said Thursday.
The air strikes have helped Kurdish militia defending the embattled Syrian border town of Kobane to hold out against the more heavily armed jihadists but have not stopped IS making new gains in parts of Iraq.