The United States expanded its air campaign in Iraq on Sunday, using a land-based bomber for the first time as it struck Islamic State targets near the strategic Mosul dam.
Iraqi Kurdish forces were reported to have regained control of much of the Mosul Dam, which militants with the Islamic State group had seized less than two weeks ago, pushing out Kurdish forces.
President Barack Obama, in a letter to Congress on Sunday, authorized the latest round of strikes, saying the order was aimed at protecting a key piece of Iraqi infrastructure and helping local fighters in their campaign to push back the militants, who have taken over large portions of the country. Until now, the air campaign had been focused on humanitarian aid and protecting U.S. personnel in Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, and in Baghdad.
“These military operations will be limited in their scope and duration as necessary to support the Iraqi forces in their efforts to retake and establish control of this critical infrastructure site, as part of their ongoing campaign against the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” Obama said.
The Mosul Dam is a key piece of infrastructure in the region, essential to ensuring water supplies reach populations far beyond Mosul. If Islamic State fighters destroyed the dam, large-scale flooding would likely result and could reach the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
The U.S. military used a mix of aircraft to carry out attacks on Sunday, including fighters, bombers and drones, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
CENTCOM did not say how many bombers were used or where they came from, but Sunday’s deployment could mark the first time major land-based aircraft were brought to the operation. The U.S. maintains B-1 bombers at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
So far, the USS George H.W. Bush, operating out of the northern Persian Gulf, has been the key launching pad for strikes.
“The strikes destroyed three ISIL armed vehicles, an ISIL vehicle-mounted anti-aircraft artillery gun, an ISIL checkpoint and an IED emplacement,” a CENTCOM news release said.
In all, 14 strikes were conducted on Sunday, according to CENTCOM. Those strikes followed nine on Saturday.
Since the United States began its air campaign more than a week ago, Kurdish fighters have been making modest gains against Islamic State fighters, who were threatening to make incursions into Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Initially, the strikes were aimed at breaking the militants’ hold around Mount Sinjar, where thousands of starving minority Yazidis were trapped and facing potential execution at the hands of the militants. The other focus was on protecting U.S. interests around Irbil. The strikes helped Kurdish fighters reclaim some towns.
The attacks around the Mosul Dam, however, signal the U.S. mission is deepening.
What comes next isn’t clear. The Obama administration has stated that it will consider more support to the country if a more inclusive government forms after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s pending resignation.
That could include the rearming of the Iraqi army, which lost stockpiles of weapons earlier this year when it ran away from Islamic State fighters moving into Mosul and other parts of the country. Already, the U.S. and other nations have begun supplying arms to Kurdish fighters in the north.
Military experts have cautioned that U.S. airstrikes alone aren’t likely to break the Islamic State’s hold on Iraq. In dense urban populations such as Mosul, airstrikes run the risk of civilian casualties. Ultimately, a successful ground offensive by Iraqi forces would need to accompany airstrikes, experts say.
The U.S. has ruled out sending in ground forces to lead the fight against the Islamic State group, which in June declared it ruled a caliphate stretching from Syria into western Iraq.
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