French jets hit Iraq targets for first time

French jets struck a suspected Islamic State target in Iraq for the first time, expanding a US-led military campaign against militants who have seized a third of the country and also control large parts of neighbouring Syria.

President François Hollande said Rafale jets hit “a logistics depot of the terrorists” near the city of Mosul, which has been held by Islamic State for more than three months. It promised more operations in coming days.

The French military action, which follows US airstrikes in northern Iraq and near the capital Baghdad, appeared to win qualified endorsement from Iraq’s top Shi’ite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

In a sermon delivered by one of his aides, the elderly cleric acknowledged Iraq needed foreign help but said Iraq must not become subservient to outside powers.

“Even if Iraq is in need of help from its brothers and friends in fighting black terrorism, maintaining the sovereignty and independence of its decisions is of the highest importance,” Sistani’s spokesman said.

Sistani speaks for millions of Iraq’s majority Shi’ites and has a worldwide following.

Islamic State fighters, who have controlled much of Syria’s eastern oil and agricultural provinces for more than a year, swept through mainly Sunni Muslim regions of north Iraq in mid-June, seizing cities including Mosul and Tikrit and only halting when close to north Baghdad.

Iraq’s army and Shi’ite militia forces have battled the Islamic State and other Sunni militants but failed to make significant territorial gains.

Car bombs, some of them claimed by Islamic State, have been a near daily occurrence in the capital. Yesterday, two car bombs killed nine people in Baghdad and a bomb in the majority Kurdish city of Kirkuk in the north killed eight.

The US launched airstrikes for the first time in August to halt an Islamic State advance on the Kurdish autonomous capital Arbil. Since then it has tried to build an international coalition to destroy the radical Sunni Muslim group, saying more than 40 countries, including Arab nations, have offered assistance.

The airstrikes have helped Kurds claw back lost territory. This week, they retook ground in the northern province of Nineveh, including villages in the Khazer area and several others further west around the town of Zummar, which remains under Islamic State control.

Elsewhere in Nineveh, the Islamic State offered another sign of its growing authority over Iraqis, creating a police force “to implement the orders of the religious judiciary”, according to a militant Islamist website.

French officials said yesterday’s mission involved two Rafale fighter jets, a supply plane, and a Navy reconnaissance plane. Four airstrikes were carried out in the space of half an hour, destroying a storage facility containing vehicles, arms and fuel.

Hollande has said French military action would be limited to Iraq and no ground troops would be sent.