Washington (BBN)-Warplanes from the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday attacked what military officials believe were the majority of the Islamic State’s oil refineries in Syria as part of the continuing effort to target sources of the terrorist group’s financing, Pentagon officials said.
The strikes on the 12 small refineries came on the third day of the American-led air campaign in Syria, and early reports indicated that the attacks had crippled the plants in the eastern provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah, Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said at a news conference.
He played a video and displayed aerial photographs of the strikes, which in at least one case left a refinery tower standing while destroying the buildings around it, reports New York Times.
Still, Admiral Kirby and other military officials acknowledged shortcomings in the budding effort to roll back gains by the Islamic State, particularly given that there were no plans to send in American troops to capitalize on airstrikes.
“We get caught up in the immediacy of these airstrikes,” Admiral Kirby said, “but this is going to take time, and nobody here in this building is not unaware of that.”
The strikes in Syria have been more intense than the attacks against Islamic State targets in Iraq, and the targets are different, too.
In Iraq, American planes have, for the most part, bombed artillery positions, convoys and even individual patrol boats.
The attacks in Syria have been concentrated on the Islamic State’s command and control structures and the sources of its revenues.
Officials with the United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said the refineries produced 300 to 500 barrels of oil daily, generating as much as $2 million per day in black-market oil sales for the group’s operations.
That estimate is higher than American officials had previously made public, and would put the price around $333 per barrel. Oil sells for about $100 a barrel on the open market.
The Islamic State “is an organization that has both tooth and tail,” Admiral Kirby said, using the military terms for war fighters (tooth) and command, finance and logistical support (tail). “In Iraq, we’ve gone after their teeth. In Syria, we’re trying to cut off their tail.”
Defense officials said the attacks on Thursday involved six American planes and 10 from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Admiral Kirby said.
On Monday, the first day of the strikes, most of the bombing was done by American planes.
Attacks also continued Thursday in Iraq, where American forces conducted 11 airstrikes on Islamic State militants, armed vehicles, Humvees, a fighting position, four checkpoints, two guard towers and a command post west of Baghdad, according to Central Command.
Iraqi security forces have worked with the Americans there, but their performance has been “mixed,” a military official said.
Admiral Kirby said the Pentagon would investigate reports that civilians have been killed in the Syrian strikes, but he said American and coalition pilots and war planners took pains to carry out the attacks with precision.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said that the raids against the oil refineries had killed 14 militants as well as five civilians, including a child.
“We are aware of some reporting out there that there may have been civilian casualties, and we are taking a look at that,” Admiral Kirby said.
Defense officials said that about 500 soldiers from the First Infantry Division will deploy to the region, and about 200 of them will be sent to joint operations centers in Erbil, in Kurdish-controlled Iraq, and Baghdad.
The strikes have done little to impede the advance of the Islamic State on Kurdish villages near the Turkish border, where tens of thousands of people have fled, fearing a massacre.
Artillery and heavy machine-gun fire could be heard from the border in southern Turkey, sounding closer later in the day.
Kurdish fighters defending the area said they were able to push the Islamic State back a few miles, but issued a statement urging members of the American-led coalition to prove they “are serious” by striking the Islamic State there. The Kurds offered to provide targeting coordinates.
Such help could prove to be a delicate matter in relations with Turkey, an American ally and NATO member that has remained vague about how it will participate in the fight against the Islamic State. Turkey views the Kurdish fighters — who are affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, known as the P.K.K., which Turkey and the United States list as a terrorist group — with suspicion because of the longtime tensions between the Turkish government and its own Kurdish population.
Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the People’s Protection Units, the Kurdish fighters in Syria also known as the Y.P.G., said the group had only light weapons and was outgunned by the Islamic State.
He said that the Islamic State’s weapons, vehicles and equipment “are in open air and visible to everyone, but yet they haven’t been targeted by the airstrikes.”
“If the U.S. and their alliance are serious,” he added, the Y.P.G. is “willing to cooperate.”
A member of the Islamic State’s de facto local administration in the town of Qourieh said the group’s headquarters were evacuated not long before it was hit by an airstrike.
“The brothers have taken a new path,” he said. “They decided to change the way they operate.”
He added: “It’s almost impossible to know where the brothers are. They disappeared, they became ghosts, their heavy weapons disappeared. Now they are only around Deir al-Zour airport and near the front lines.”
The scene was calmer on the Turkish side of the border, where waves of Syrian Kurdish refugees and Turkish Kurds have arrived wanting to enter Syria to join the fight.
But from a village near the border fence, the black flag of the Islamic State could be seen flying from a hillock. Jumaa Ali, 49, said he had watched a man that villagers suspected as an Islamic State militant climb into a border watchtower. He said Kurdish villagers were waiting for him to climb down in the hope of shooting him.
“It’s dangerous now to live in this village,” he said, then added with a laugh, “but we can cut heads, too.”
Nearby, masked men checked cars. Residents said they were local Kurds who were extorting goods from Syrian Kurdish refugees as they made their way into Turkey.
About a mile away, as police checked refugees’ bags for weapons, Selin Unal, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency, said that Turkey had accepted as many Syrian refugees since last Friday as Europe had throughout the three-year civil war. “This is a huge responsibility on Turkey,” she said.
Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Anne Barnard from Gaziantep, Turkey. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
BBN/ASI-26Sept14-9:00am (BST)