Iraqis hope U.S. airstrikes on IS in Syria not prelude to control Syria

Iraqi people hailed on Tuesday air strikes launched by the United States and its partners against Islamic State targets in Syria, but said that such act should not be a prelude to interfere in Syria’s internal affairs.

The United States and several Gulf Arab allies launched their first air and missile strikes on Islamic State strongholds in Syria on Tuesday.

“We hope that this will not be used as a pretext by the United States of America to gain a foothold on the Syrian territories and in consequence interfere in its internal affairs. We hope that this action is for purely humanitarian purposes with the aim of evicting terrorist gangs. These groups have no clear ideology but rather they are implementing an agenda of the world powers who created them to contain and control the Middle East region,” said Iraqi citizen Salih Iskander.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain were all involved, although their exact roles in the military action were unclear.

Qatar played a supporting role in the air strikes, the official said.

Another official said at least one U.S. ship had launched surface-to-surface Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Armed U.S. drones were also used in the attacks.

The targets included Raqqa city in eastern Syria, the headquarters of Islamic State, an extremist Sunni Muslim force that has seized large expanses of territory in Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate erasing borders in the heart of the Middle East.

“We hope that after the intervention in Syria, there will be a clear intervention in Iraq to hit terrorist strongholds and provide support and technical assistance to the Iraqi army to chase out the terrorists, in order to help put an end to this issue,” another Iraqi citizen, Hussein Karim, said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has branded Islamic State an acute threat to the West as well as the Middle East, and said that key NATO allies stand 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.

“Definitely such a thing pleases us. We want the United States of America and the Western countries to take part in striking strongholds of terrorists and criminals who are trying to destabilize the situation, whether they are in Syria or in Iraq. But we do not want the United States to interfere in Syria’s affairs because Syria has law and sovereignty. But we want them to help Syria and stand with it in its war against terrorism, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. This pleases us as we are pleased to see such action in Iraq or in any other country,” said Iraqi citizen Raad Mohammed.

The strikes took place hours before President Obama goes to New York for the U.N. General Assembly where he will try to rally more nations behind his drive to aggressively take on Islamic State.

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