American warplanes carried out five strikes on Islamic State insurgents menacing Iraq's Haditha Dam on Sunday, U.S. officials and witnesses said, widening what President Barack Obama called a campaign to stop and ultimately defeat the jihadist movement, according to The Associated Press.
Obama said the Islamic State is a threat to the West as well as the Middle East and said that key NATO allies stood ready to back Washington in action against the well-armed sectarian force, which has seized expanses of northern Iraq and eastern Syria and declared a border-blurring religious caliphate, the AP reported.
The leader of a pro-Iraqi government paramilitary force in western Iraq said the air strikes wiped out an Islamic State patrol trying to attack the dam, Iraq's second biggest hydroelectric facility that also provides millions with water, according to the AP.
The aerial assault drove Islamic State fighters away from the dam, according to a police intelligence officer in the vast western province of Anbar, a hotbed of Islamist insurgency, the AP reported.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the strikes on the Sunni Muslim insurgents had been carried out at the request of the Shi'ite Muslim-led central government in Baghdad, according to the AP.
"If that dam would fall into (Islamic State's) hands or if that dam would be destroyed, the damage that would cause would be very significant and it would put a significant, additional and big risk into the mix in Iraq," Hagel told reporters during a trip to Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, the AP reported.
The Pentagon said in a statement that the strikes destroyed four IS Humvees, four IS armed vehicles, two of which were carrying antiaircraft artillery, an IS fighting position, one IS command post and an IS defensive fighting position, and all aircraft left the strike areas safely, according to the AP.
The strikes were Washington's first reported offensive into Anbar since it started attacks on Islamic State forces in the north of Iraq in August, the AP reported.
