JORDAN has conducted 56 raids in three days of airstrikes targeting a stronghold of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, the country’s air force commander has said.
The country launched the bombing raids on the Syrian city of Raqqa, an ISIL stronghold, on Thursday after ISIL released the killing of a Jordanian pilot held hostage by the group.
“We achieved what we aimed at. We destroyed logistics centres, arms depots and targeted hideouts of their fighters,” General Mansour al-Jbour, the head of the Jordanian airforce said on Sunday.
Jbour said that 20 percent of the total sorties against the armed group made by the US-led coaltion had been conducted by Jordan.
The sorties have led to the “degrading” of nearly 20 percent of the groups’ capabilities, he said.
“We are determined to wipe them from the face of the Earth.”ISIL recently released a video showing them burning the Jordanian pilot, Moaz al-Kassasbeh, to death while he was trapped in a cage.
In comments published on Saturday, Hussein al-Majali, Jordan’s interior minister, told the state-run al-Rai newspaper that his country would go after ISIL fighters “wherever they are”.
The heightened confrontation has raised concerns about possible ISIL attacks in Jordan. (Al Jazeera)
Link:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2015/02/jordan-bombed-isil-56-times-days-150208133049169.html
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