URGENT: US launches airstrikes against ISIL terrorists

(IraqiNews.com) The United States has launched the first air strike against terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the US Pentagon announced.

The air strikes on Friday took place shortly following the start of relief supplies dropped by air to beleaguered Yazidi refugees fleeing ISIL in Iraq.
The Pentagon said two US fighter jets dropped bombs on ISIL fighters in Iraq towing artillery outside Erbil near US personnel.

Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby says two F/A-18 jets dropped 500-pound bombs on a piece of artillery and the truck towing it.

He said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had been using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil where US personnel are located.
“The decision to strike was made by the US Central Command commander under authorization granted him by the commander in chief,” he said.

On Thursday US President Barack Obama authorized air strikes on Iraq to protect Christians and prevent genocide of tens of thousands of members of an ancient sect sheltering on a desert mountaintop from ISIL fighters threatening to exterminate them.

Obama said he had authorized limited bombing to blunt the onslaught of militants who have captured swathes of northern Iraq and advanced to a half-hour drive from the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil.

It was the first time since ISIL — an offshoot of Al Qaida — began a lightning offensive in June, overrunning swathes of northern and western Iraq and declaring a “caliphate” in captured areas of Iraq and Syria, that the United States has opted for military action.