Ankara says the number of Syrians fleeing the fighting with Islamic State militants in the border town of Kobane has topped 160,000, as they stream into neighboring Turkey. (Reuters)
LONDON — Three European nations – including Britain – joined the widening U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq on Friday, even as the group’s fighters renewed their attempt to overrun a strategic border city in Syria.
Britain’s belated entry, seven weeks after the United States began carrying out strikes, followed an overwhelming parliamentary vote to authorize attacks. Denmark and Belgium also opted to join the fight.
But as the coalition expanded, its constraints became clear. All three countries that authorized military action on Friday decided to limit their involvement to Iraq. Meanwhile, Islamic State militants demonstrated that airstrikes have failed to slow their assault on critical positions within Syria.
Along the Turkish-Syrian border, Islamic State fighters backed by artillery fire pushed toward the city of Kobane -- known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab – as Syrian Kurdish forces dug in for a key test of their strength.
The United States and its Arab allies broadened their campaign to targets in Syria this week, after a drumbeat of American strikes in Iraq since early August.
But no European ally has been willing to join the Syria campaign – raising the prospect that Islamic State could try to use it as a refuge.
“Simply allowing [Islamic State] to retreat across an invisible border is no answer,” said Peter Hain, a member of parliament and former cabinet minister, during Britain’s daylong debate.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, scarred by a humiliating defeat last year when he sought permission to launch strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, did not try to win approval for attacks in Syria this time around.
Instead, he limited his proposal to Iraq, where he had a clear consensus thanks to the Iraqi government’s invitation for Western help. No such invitation exists from Syria, and British opposition leader Ed Miliband has suggested he won’t support widening the campaign without a U.N. resolution that is unlikely to ever come.
Friday’s House of Commons vote endorsing Cameron’s plan to deploy six Tornado fighter jets to Iraq was lopsided, at 524 to 43.
Still, there was opposition from the backbenches, both from hawks who wanted to go further, as well as from doves who insisted the country had not learned the right lessons from more than a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But Cameron argued that the Islamic State was impossible to ignore, given the threat it poses to Britain.
“This is not a threat on the far side of the world. Left unchecked, we will face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member, with a declared and proven intention to attack our country and our people,” Cameron said as he opened the debate.
Cameron and others who support airstrikes were quick to differentiate Friday’s vote from the last time the British Parliament authorized military action in Iraq, in 2003. Cameron stressed that there would be no boots on the ground and said the air campaign would be marked more by “patience and persistence” than “shock and awe.”
The British contribution is modest, representing only a third the number of its jets that flew over Libya during the 2011 campaign against Moammar Gaddafi’s government. But it is similar to the commitment of other nations that have joined the coalition against the Islamic State, including France, the Netherlands and Australia.
While the British public was divided over joining the air campaign when the United States first launched strikes, opinion has solidified in favor of the idea in recent weeks — especially since Islamic State militants executed two American journalists and a British aid worker. At least two other Britons are known to be held by the group and have been forced to appear in Islamic State propaganda videos.
European counterterrorism officials have expressed deep concern that the Islamic State will try to carry out attacks on Western soil, perhaps employing some of the estimated 3,000 Europeans who have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight with the organization.
Cameron suggested Friday that there would be a strong case for expanding Britain’s air campaign to Syria — but said that would require a separate debate.
SUBHEAD
Meanwhile, the battle in Syria rages. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that airstrikes by the U.S. and its Arab allies had disrupted Islamic State’s command and control, logistics and infrastructure in Syria.
But the group has continued its quest for territory. Gaining control of Kobane would give the Islamic State a hold over a major stretch of the border and open more potential supply lines even as airstrikes seek to erode the militants’ financial underpinnings.
The latest clashes have sent refugees streaming toward Turkey, adding to the estimated 1.5 million who have crossed into the neighboring country to escape Syria’s civil war since 2011.
Moustafa Oniedi, a Syrian Kurdish activist based near Kobane, said there are 10,000 Kurdish fighters amassed to defend the city.
“[They] are ready to fight until their last breath,” he said by telephone. “Either they die or they win.”
The fighting appeared to intensify Friday after days of seesaw clashes. An activist monitoring Syrian events, Abu Jilan, said at least two airstrikes hit the Kobane area while Kurdish forces reclaimed several villages from retreating Islamic State fighters.
But the Islamic State fighters regrouped after daybreak and launched a three-pronged attack around Kobane, said Oniedi, the activist. He claimed the airstrikes did not target frontline Islamic State positions, allowing them to quickly resume the siege. The U.S. military has not confirmed any airs attacks around Kobane.
Among the latest airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were ones targeting oil sites and Islamic State strongholds in the eastern Deir el-Zour province, according to reports from the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict. The area is also an important route connecting Islamic State territory in Syria and Iraq.
Some of the airstrikes in Syria were carried out bywarplanes from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The Arab states are leading opponents of Syrian President Assad. Their assistance in the air campaign is likely tied to promises from the United States to sharply boost military aid to Syrian rebels seeking to oust Assad in a civil war that has claimed nearly 200,000 lives since 2011.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday that the United States and its Arab partners have launched 43 airstrikes in Syria, and the Pentagon has carried out more than 200 airstrikes on militant targets in Iraq since they were approved by President Obama on Aug. 7.
Collard reported from Beirut. Brian Murphy and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report from Washington.
Griff Witte is The Post’s London bureau chief. He previously served as the paper’s deputy foreign editor and as the bureau chief in Kabul, Islamabad and Jerusalem.
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