Iraq says its warplanes targeted IS Jihadists in Syria

BAGHDAD: Iraqi warplanes carried out a raid on Sunday targeting Islamic State group commanders in eastern Syria, in the second such strike on the Jihadists since mid-April, the premier’s office said.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the "painful strike" which targeted "a meeting of IS commanders south of Al-Dushashiya in Syrian territory", a statement said. F-16 fighter jets were used in the early morning strike and the raid was "successful", the spokesman of Iraq’s security media centre, General Yehya Rassoul, told AFP.

Dushashiya is in a desert region of Syria’s Hasakeh province, where a US-backed Kurdish-led alliance is fighting the Jihadists. On April 19, Iraq said it had carried out an air raid against IS in Syria that killed 36 IS fighters, near the town of Hajin in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

Iraq declared victory in December against IS, which launched a sweeping offensive in 2014 and at one point controlled a third of the country. The Jihadists still control pockets of desert along the border with Syria.