BEirut- The Royal Air Force jets bombed different ISIS targets in southern Syria on Friday night, killing and injuring several members of the terrorist group and destroying vehicles, the Jordan Armed Forces announced in a statement Saturday.
“Drones and precision-guided munitions were used in the airstrikes, which also targeted a former Syrian army post ISIS had occupied,” the statement said.
The airstrikes are part of the Kingdom’s efforts to eradicate the terrorist organization.
The Royal Air Force fighter jets destroyed an arms depot, a warehouse used to make car bombs, and barracks used by the terrorist group, the army said.
Separately, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Saturday they have launched the third phase of the “Euphrates Wrath” which aims to isolate the ISIS radical group in its de facto capital.
But the SDF announcement came as The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration decided not to adopt the plan of former President Barack Obama to take Raqqa and to support the Kurds.
“They provided the information, but we found huge gaps in it. It was poor staff work,” a senior White House official who reviewed the document told the newspaper.
The official also told The Washington Post that the Obama plan which envisaged arming and training Syrian Kurdish fighters lacked details about where exactly the training would take place and how many U.S. soldiers would be required.
The official added that the proposed plan didn’t include any provision for coordinating operations with Russia or a clear political strategy for easing tensions with Ankara over U.S.-Kurdish cooperation.
A Kurdish commander who asked to remain anonymous told Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday that after the U.S. had supported the SDF militias for the past two years and after those forces succeeded in fighting ISIS, “the Americans cannot substitute them with another team.”
Separately, Syria’s Kurds seeking to establish a federal state would not wait for the new U.S. administration to draw its strategy regarding the situation in Raqqa. Instead, the SDF launched on Saturday the third stage of the Euphrates Wrath, even before the second phase of this operation ended. The SDF aims to control the west and eastern countrysides of Raqqa before completely besieging the city.
SDF spokesperson Talal Silo told Asharq Al-Awsat: “We have not yet completed the second phase of the Raqqa operation, which aims to liberate the western countryside of the city. Instead, we have decided to simultaneously kick off the third phase to liberate the eastern countryside.”
Silo uncovered that the SDF had asked Washington’s support to prepare for the operation.