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Washington - US military aircraft conducted an air strike on Friday against Islamic State artillery used against Kurdish forces defending the city of Erbil, near US personnel, a Pentagon spokesperson said.
Two F/A-18 aircraft dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece near Erbil, Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.
He said the Islamic rebels had been using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil where US personnel are located.
He said the Islamic rebels had been using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Arbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The United States has a consulate and, since Iraq's latest security crisis erupted in June, a joint military operations center in Arbil.
"The decision to strike was made by the US Central Command commander under authorisation granted him by the commander in chief," Kirby said.
He said the strike occurred at 06:45 EDT, or 13:45 in Arbil (10:45 GMT). According to military officials, the strike was launched from the US aircraft carrier the USS George HW Bush. In June, the Pentagon ordered the ship to the Gulf in preparation for any possible military action in Iraq.
The strike came only hours after US President Barack Obama authorised air strikes on Iraq late on Thursday to protect Christians and avert "a potential act of genocide" of tens of thousands of members of the ancient Yazidi sect who have taken refuge on a desert mountaintop from Islamic State forces.
The United States has also begun dropping relief supplies to the refugees.
700 troops already in
Sunni
fighters from the Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot bent on
establishing a caliphate and eradicating non-believers, have swept
through northern Iraq since June.
They are now encroaching on Arbil, a
major city that is the seat of the Kurdish region's government, its
parliament and, now, temporary home to scores of refugees who have fled
other parts of Iraq.
The renewed military action in Iraq is a striking turn 2-1/2 years after Obama pulled all US troops out of Iraq in December 2011, ending the long and bloody US war that began in 2003.
While Obama has insisted the United States would not commit ground troops again, since June he has ordered some 700 soldiers into Iraq to protect diplomatic personnel and facilities and to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Iraq's military, much of which melted away in the face of the Islamic State advance.
Also in June, the United States relocated some of its staff from the US Embassy in Baghdad to Arbil, Basra and Amman, Jordan due to fears the Islamic State forces could directly attack the Iraqi capital.
