Image courtesy of U.S. Navy/Dept. of Defense

Air Attacks on ISIS Include Cruise Missiles
| published Sept. 23, 2014 |

By Thursday Review staff

 

In this photograph, a Tomahawk cruise missile launches from the vertical missile launch bay on the guided missile destroyer USS Arleigh Burke early on the morning of September 23. U.S. military operations began a campaign of airstrikes inside Syria to target ISIS terrorist positions, weapons caches and ammunition stockpiles. The cruise missiles can travel at high speeds and hit targets with great accuracy.

The USS Arleigh Burke is in the Red Sea as part of the U.S. 5th Fleet, which has assets also deployed in the Arabian Gulf (Persian Gulf). The U.S. military has conducted more than 190 airstrikes against ISIS in northern Iraq, but as of Monday the air campaign was widened to include ISIS operational centers inside war-torn Syria. The U.S. was joined in the air campaign by fighter planes of several Arab countries, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Over the weekend, warplanes belonging to the French military also participated in the bombings.

U.S. warplanes also attacked ISIS locations along a wide tract of northern Syria over the last 24 hours, including strikes on ISIS targets just south of the Syrian border with Turkey, where ISIS militants are in a fierce battle to take control of several Kurdish strongholds, and where hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled in fear of the ISIS onslaught.

For more about the U.S. attacks on ISIS, and on the humanitarian crisis now unfolding along the Turkish border, follow the links below.

This U.S. Navy photograph was taken by Navy mass communications specialist 2nd class Carlos M. Vazquez.


Related Thursday Review articles:

Turkey’s Growing Humanitarian Crisis; R. Alan Clanton; Thursday Review; Sept. 22, 2014.

The Hunt for ISIS, the Hunt for Jihadi John; R. Alan Clanton; Thursday Review; Sept. 14, 2014.