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French Warplanes Strike Islamic State Militants in Syria France Strikes ISIS Targets in Syria in Retaliation for Attacks
(about 4 hours later)
PARIS — French warplanes struck Islamic State militants in Syria on Sunday, a French government official said, two days after attackers linked to the terrorist group carried out a coordinated assault on Paris that killed 129 people. PARIS — France bombed the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday night, its most aggressive strike against the Islamic State group it blames for killing 129 people in a string of terrorist attacks across Paris only two days before.
Prior to the attack on Paris, France had been sparing in its strikes against targets in Syria. President François Hollande, who vowed to be “unforgiving with the barbarians” of the Islamic State after the carnage in Paris, decided on the airstrikes in a meeting with his national security team on Saturday, officials said.
News reports in France said the airstrikes were focused on Raqqa, the city in northern Syria that is the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State. While France has been conducting scores of airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, it had been bombing inside Syria only sparingly, wary of inadvertently strengthening the hand of President Bashar al-Assad by killing his enemies.
The attackers in Friday’s terrorist assault in Paris communicated at some point beforehand with known members of the Islamic State in Syria, officials on both sides of the Atlantic say, adding evidence to the assertions that the radical group coordinated or helped carry out the attacks rather than simply inspired them. But after militants with AK-47 rifles and suicide explosives vests shattered the peaceful revelry of Paris on Friday night, killing dozens of civilians in restaurants and at a concert hall, France seemed intent on sending a clear message of its determination to curb the Islamic State and its ability to carry out attacks outside the territory it controls.
President François Hollande of France has characterized the attacks as “an act of war” carried out by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. He provided no specific information, but the Islamic State released statements on Saturday claiming responsibility for the attacks, part of increasing indications that the group is becoming more capable of extending its reach far beyond its base in Syria and Iraq. The French Defense Ministry said in a statement that the air raid, coordinated with American forces, was led by 12 French aircraft, including 10 fighter jets, and had destroyed two Islamic State targets in Raqqa, the radical group’s self-proclaimed capital.
“It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish,” Mr. Hollande said on Saturday. The United States provided French officials with information to help them strike Islamic State targets in Syria, known as “strike packages,” American officials said.
While the information made available so far about the links between the Islamic State and the Paris attackers was not definitive, it suggested at a minimum that the assailants had not acted totally on their own. Initial reports from activists on the ground in Raqqa, which could not be verified independently, said that hospitals had not reported any civilian casualties. Yet they also said the targeted sites included clinics, a museum and other buildings in an urban area, leaving the full extent of the damage unknown.
Describing the case for the group’s role, American and French officials said the attackers had operated with high levels of sophistication, beyond what would be expected of a plot in which the assailants were merely inspired to act by a radical group rather than trained or equipped by it. The French military response capped another tense day in the wake of the attacks across Paris on Friday night. The authorities hunted for an eighth suspect believed to be on the loose, while seeking to piece together how the assailants got the training, weapons and explosives they used.
The attackers are believed to have communicated using encryption technology, according to European officials who had been briefed on the investigation but were not authorized to speak publicly. It was not clear whether the encryption was part of widely used communications tools, like WhatsApp, which the authorities have a hard time monitoring, or something more elaborate. Intelligence officials have been pressing for more leeway to counter the growing use of encryption. President Obama and other world leaders, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, gathered at a summit meeting in Turkey, grappling with how to respond to the Islamic State, the civil war in Syria and the mass emigration from the region toward Europe.
The disciplined way some of the attackers handled themselves during the assault and evidence of some military-style training — for example, having one attacker continue shooting while another reloaded his weapon — also suggested that the plot involved considerable planning and input from an organized group, a French official said. Paris remained jittery all day, and early in the evening unfounded reports of gunfire prompted an evacuation of the Place de la République, in the heart of the city.
Following the attacks, intelligence and law enforcement agencies reviewed intercepted communications and concluded that the attackers had been in touch with members of the Islamic State in Syria, American and French officials said. The revelations that at least four French citizens were involved in the attacks — three brothers and a man who lived around Chartres, about 60 miles southwest of Paris — seemed certain to exacerbate longstanding fears in France about the place of Muslim immigrants and converts in French society. Even before the latest violence, the nation was still reeling from a smaller set of deadly attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, at a kosher grocery and against a police officer only 10 months earlier.
The Paris attack has forced a broad reassessment in the West of the Islamic State’s strategy and capabilities. The group has also claimed responsibility for the crash of a Russian charter plane carrying vacationers home from a resort in Egypt, killing all 224 people aboard. The French airstrikes on Raqqa began at 7:50 p.m. Paris time, first taking aim at an Islamic State “command post, jihadist recruitment center and weapons and ammunition depot,” the Defense Ministry said. The second target, it said, was a “terrorist training camp.”
On Sunday, President Obama met with other world leaders in Turkey, where containing and fighting the Islamic State was a major topic of conversation. Warplanes continued to hover over the city close to midnight, according to residents and activist groups. Residents have seen the city bombed by Syrian, American and Russian warplanes. They have been terrorized by public executions by the Islamic State. Now they are wary of yet another power arriving to pummel the city.
Khaled al-Homsi, an antigovernment activist from Palmyra, who uses a nom de guerre for his safety and is the nephew of an archaeologist who was beheaded by Islamic State fighters, issued a plea on Twitter to France, saying not all of the city’s residents were Islamic State members and urging caution for the safety of civilians.
“To the people & government in #France, #Raqqa City residents are not all #ISIS,” he tweeted. “Please do not targets at random.”
Reports on the strikes began flowing from the Raqqa area about 9:30 p.m. local time, with activists on the ground counting six at first, the numbers mounting minute by minute. It was a heavier barrage than has typically hit the city and its environs, and it knocked out electricity and water service, spreading more fear than usual among civilians.
The reports were shared by several activist networks, including Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, an organization of current and former Raqqa residents who report on events there.
The group was recently victimized by a provocative crime: the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed responsibility for beheading two members of the activist group in Turkey, a move that was surprising in that it was carried out beyond the territory the Islamic State controls.
The Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian passenger jetliner over Egypt, killing all 224 people aboard, intensifying concerns that the group’s reach and ambitions for sowing terror are expanding.
France has been among the most outspoken opponents of Mr. Assad. In 2013, it was prepared to join the United States in attacking his government after proof emerged that he was using chemical weapons against his own people. When President Obama decided against attacking Mr. Assad, France suspended its plans.
Mr. Hollande’s government began bombing Islamic State-held territory in Iraq in September 2014, and it has carried out about 280 airstrikes since then.
But it has only begun to strike targets inside Syria in the last seven weeks, and had carried out fewer than a half dozen bombings there before Sunday. France has struck training camps, and just last week it attacked an oil and gas depot, according to a statement by the French Defense Ministry.
Jean Yves le Drian, the French defense minister, in an interview in the Journal du Dimanche, said the oil and gas target was chosen because the Islamic State uses the black market sale of oil and gas as a way to finance its weapon acquisition.
There is a growing focus on both reducing the Islamic State’s territory and its financing, said French government officials and experts.
“We need to push the organization away from its territories,” said Jean Charles Brisard, a terrorism expert, who worked in the French government and now is the chairman for the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, a Paris-based research group.
“Most of its resources are from the territory, so we have to push it away from its resources in Syria and Iraq and that means going in on the ground with a regional power,” he said.
The United States currently has soldiers on the ground in Iraq working with Syrian and Iraqi Kurds to dislodge the Islamic State. France has not yet said whether it will adopt a similar course.
On Sunday, Mr. Hollande met his predecessor and rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the Élysée Palace. Afterward, Mr. Sarkozy urged decisive action against the Islamic State — a position Mr. Hollande has also taken.
“We need everybody in order to exterminate Daesh,” Mr. Sarkozy told reporters, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
Mr. Sarkozy, who has been known to be tough on immigrants during his tenure as president, cautioned against linking the refugee crisis with the terrorist attacks, but added: “We need, together, to rein in the wave of migration ensuing from the Syrian situation.”