US and Arab allies take to the air to put heat on militants

Photo / AP

The United States and its Arab allies have turned up the heat on jihadists in Syria, striking the oil facilities that funded their brutal rise and building an international coalition to oppose them.

And British lawmakers were due to vote overnight on their country joining the air armada pummelling the Islamic State group (Isis), and French jets were in action again yesterday in the skies over Iraq.

In Washington, the Pentagon released cockpit video of guided missiles from F-15 jets blasting oil refineries and Isis compounds in the latest night of strikes in Syria.

US President Barack Obama took advantage of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week to bend the ears of fellow world leaders over the threat posed by the jihadists.

The group has seized a large tract of territory spanning eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq, and has begun to make headway inspiring Islamists further afield to pledge allegiance to its "caliphate".

A US commander in Pacific East Asia warned that 1000 militants from the region were seeking to join the movement, and this week an Algerian off-shoot group killed a French hostage.

But the US-led coalition has also made progress in building a united front. Turkey has pledged stronger support for the campaign, and Obama spoke to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday.

If the British Parliament votes to take part, the Royal Air Force will join jets from the US, France, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan hitting Isis targets.

And the allies' domestic intelligence services are also stepping up their game.

The FBI says it has identified a militant with a British accent seen executing Western hostages in Isis videos.

And in London, police arrested nine people suspected of links to radical extremism, including a notorious radical preacher.

The latest wave of strikes hit the small-scale crude refineries that Isis gangs use to generate up to US$2 million ($2.5 million) in revenues a day.

The strikes by US and Arab warplanes against the oil refineries killed 14 jihadists but also left five civilians dead, including a child, according to the Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights.

The Pentagon says it is aware of reports of civilian casualties, and is investigating, but insists raids are carried out with precision.

A spokesman said foreigners from Europe, Arab nations, Chechnya and Turkey made up the vast majority of the more than 140 jihadists killed since the US-led raids began in Syria earlier this week.

Also at the General Assembly, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the West was responsible for "strategic blunders" that had created terror havens, but also called for action against jihadists.

Rouhani said western governments were responsible for sowing the seeds of the outbreak of extremism that has brought turmoil to the Middle East and demanded that they "acknowledge their errors" and apologise.

"Certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hand of madmen, who now spare no one," Rouhani said.

"Currently our peoples are paying the price. Today's anti-Westernism is the offspring of yesterday's colonialism. Today's anti-Westernism is a reaction to yesterday's racism.

"The strategic blunders of the West in the Middle-East, Central Asia, and the Caucuses have turned these parts of the world into a haven for terrorists and extremists.

"Military aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and improper interference in the developments in Syria are clear examples of this erroneous strategic approach in the Middle East."

Isis has committed widespread atrocities including mass executions of captured Iraqi soldiers, forced conversions of non-Muslims and the on-camera beheadings of Western hostages.

- AFP, Independent