France has launched fresh airstrikes against Isis targets in Syria as the Pentagon chief urged European countries to join a military coalition to defeat Islamic Statein the wake of the Paris attacks.
“For the second time in 24 hours the French military conducted an air raid against [Isis] in Raqqa in Syria,” the French ministry of defence said in a statement.
Ten Rafale and Mirage 2000 fighters carried out the raid at 0030 GMT on Tuesday, dropping 16 bombs, the ministry said.
“Both targets were hit and destroyed simultaneously,” it said. “Conducted in coordination with US forces, the raid was aimed at sites identified during reconnaissance missions previously carried out by France.”
Echoing a call to arms from French president, François Hollande, on Monday night, Ash Carter, the US defence secretary, said America was continuing to look for opportunities to strike at the terrorists but needs its European allies to make bolder moves to defeat the group militarily.
In his first public comments since 129 were killed in the coordinated assault on the French capital, Carter said the attacks had “galvanised” France into taking bolder action against Isis and cooperating further with the US and that he hoped it would have the same effect on other European partners.
“We’re looking to do more, we’re looking for every opportunity we can to get in there and go at [Isis], but we need others to ... get in the game as well,” Carter said.
“I’m hoping that this tragedy has the effect of galvanising others as it has galvanised the French,” Carter said, speaking at a forum in Washington.
In a powerfully worded address to a joint session of parliament on Monday, Hollande said France was “at war” with Isis, and called for united action to defeat the terror group, which claimed responsibility for Friday’s attacks in retaliation for France’s involvement in US-backed airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
Hollande promised to increase funds for national security and strengthen anti-terrorism laws in response to the suicide bombings and shootings that killed 129.
“We’re not engaged in a war of civilisations, because these assassins do not represent any. We are in a war against jihadi terrorism which is threatening the whole world,” he told a sombre chamber.
Hollande pledged that French fighter jets, which bombed the group’s bases in the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday, would intensify their assaults. He also said France would triple its strike capacity in the region with the departure of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle for the eastern Mediterranean.
Hollande would also step up diplomatic efforts by meeting the US president, Barack Obama, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the coming days to urge them to pool their resources.
“We must combine our forces to achieve a result that is already too late in coming,” the president said.
Keeping the pressure on Isis, the US military said on Monday night that its warplanes had destroyed 116 oil-hauling trucks in eastern Syria used in a smuggling operation that brings Isis an estimated $1.4m a day.
The airstrikes, which took place on Sunday, were the first of their kind in more than a year of US-led raids in Syria. Attack planes and gunships pounded the trucks as they clustered near Abu Kamal, a town close to the Iraqi border.
US officials previously had said they avoided attacking fuel trucks out of concern for civilian casualties.
Navy captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said that in an effort to warn the truck drivers to leave the area in advance of Sunday’s attacks, leaflets were dropped and coalition planes conducted low-level “show of force” flights over the site.
The attacks were part of US-led campaign against Isis which also includes efforts to take out well-known members of the group and identifying and aiding effective ground forces.
Carter said the biggest Isis-related threat to the US came from “lone wolf”-style attacks by individuals. He identified the fatal July shooting of US servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by a young Muslim who grew up in the area as an example.
“Their capability [in the US] is not what it is in Europe,” Carter said. “We don’t have some of the population that has long-standing terrorist inclinations that are in some of the European countries.”
The US also has to employ intelligence and surveillance methods to disrupt Isis, in light of the group’s extensive use of social media, Carter said.
Government collection of Americans’ data has raised privacy concerns, especially since a massive program to collect and store phone records was disclosed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“We’re trying to protect our country and protect our people and we need to be reasonable about that,” Carter said. “We need to find a way that is consistent with a free and open internet but which also allows us as public officials to protect our people.”
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