The US-led coalition has inflicted serious damage on Islamic State, carrying out around 1,000 air strikes so far in Iraq and Syria, but the fight against the militants could last years, US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday.
The US and its allies began air strikes in September after the Sunni militants made large territorial advances. The Iraqi army, Sunni tribal fighters and Kurdish forces have since recovered some ground from the group which in its Arabic acronym is known as Daesh.
Our commitment wil be measured most likely in years
“It is much harder now than when we started for Daesh to assemble forces in strength, to travel in convoys and to launch concerted attacks,” Kerry said at a meeting in Brussels of some 60 countries involved in the coalition.
But he said the campaign would be a long one, saying: “Our commitment will be measured most likely in years.”
Kerry declined to comment on reports from officials in Washington that Iran had conducted air strikes.
“Nothing has changed in our fundamental policy of not coordinating our military activity, or any other activity, at this moment with Iranians. We are not doing that,” he told a news conference.
Kerry said he hoped countries in the region would take the lead in paying for reconstruction of parts of Iraq once they had been seized back from Islamic State control. Kerry said the US had taken no decision to back a buffer zone along the Syria-Turkish border. The Wall Street Journal said this week a safe zone was a possible US concession to Turkey in return for use of bases to launch attacks on Islamic State militants in Syria.
Meanwhile Iraq’s Interior Ministry said yesterday that a woman detained by Lebanese authorities was not the wife of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but the sister of a man convicted of bombings in southern Iraq.
Security officials in Lebanon had said on Tuesday the Lebanese army had detained a wife and daughter of al-Baghdadi’s as they crossed from Syria late last month. “The one detained by Lebanese authorities was Saja Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi, sister of Omar Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi who is detained by authorities and sentenced to death for his participation in ... explosions,” ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said.
“The wives of the terrorist al-Baghdadi are Asmaa Fawzi Mohammed al-Dulaimi and Esraa Rajab Mahel al-Qaisi, and there is no wife in the name of Saja al-Dulaimi.”
Maan said Saja Dulaimi had fled to Syria where she was detained by authorities. She was part of a group of female detainees freed in exchange for the release of a group of nuns captured by Islamist insurgents in Syria, he said. Lebanese security officials said their investigations still indicated the detained woman was al-Baghdadi’s wife.
“We are surprised by the position of the Iraqi Interior Ministry in light of the fact (Dulaimi) said that she was married to Ibrahim al-Samarai, who is also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” said a Lebanese security official. He added the authorities were still awaiting the result of a DNA test to verify whether the girl travelling with Dulaimi was in fact al-Baghdadi’s daughter. A senior official had said on Tuesday the test had already shown her to be his child.
Officials said on Tuesday Dulaimi was detained in northern Lebanon after she was found with a fake passport.