WASHINGTON — US fighter jets bombed military equipment of the radical group Islamic State on Friday morning — following up quickly on President Obama’s order to use air power to protect US personnel in northern Iraq.
Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said the US conducted the “targeted airstrike” with two F/A-18 fighter jets, dropping two 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece near Erbil.
The radical Islamist group “was using this artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Irbil where US personnel are located,” he said in a statement.
In New Delhi, where he is traveling, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US has airdropped more than 60 of 72 bundles of food and water to religious minorities holed up in mountaintop camps in northern Iraq, where they are surrounded by the militants.
The Pentagon says it has the ability to launch strikes from manned and unmanned aircraft — though it has held off to date, partly out of concern that Islamic State fighters have mingled with the population and are hard to root out.
Hagel said if the group moves against Erbil, Baghdad or the stranded refugees, “It’s pretty clear who they are, and they would be pretty identifiable where our airstrikes could be effective.”
A US official said the military will use F-16 and F/A-18 fighter jets based in the region for the strikes, and aircraft based in Kuwait for the airdrops. Kirby said the fighters that conducted Friday morning’s strikes came from the USS George H.W. Bush.
Kirby said the decision to strike was made by Gen. Lloyd Austin at US Central Command under Obama’s order.
“As the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take direct action against [the Islamic State] when they threaten our personnel and facilities,” he said.
Obama told the nation Thursday night the US would conduct emergency airdrops of food, water and supplies. He said action was needed to prevent “a potential act of genocide” against some 40,000 members of the Yazidi religious sect.
They are cut off and surrounded by Islamic State fighters, who consider Yazidis and other minority groups devil worshippers and infidels.
The US has already sent a few hundred advisers to the region to assist the government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north, but they remain under threat by the rapid advance by the Islamic State.
The airstrike was the first since 2011, when the US left Iraq after a long campaign.
Friday morning, the administration got the closest thing yet to official support from the congressional leadership for its re-engagement, when House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon voiced his support.
“The president’s decision to use force in Iraq was appropriate given the circumstances,” he said.
“We must all understand that [the Islamic State] threatens both the Iraqi people and poses a clear and present danger to the United States. It is regrettable that [the group’s] rise was preventable, but we must now look forward to the task ahead,” he said.