Paris – France launched massive airstrikes in Syria this Sunday. Two days after a series of coordinated attacks, the French government responds against Islamic State blaming Syria’s extremist groups for the terrorist attacks after ISIL released statements claiming responsibility.
Ten military airstrikes, which flew from Jordan and The United Arab Emirates, delivered twenty bombs to two targets in Raqqa, northern Syria. This is the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. One of the targets was a command center and the other a training camp, French defense officials reported.
“It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish,” François Hollande president of France said on Saturday.
On the other hand French investigators are hunting for apparent culprits of the attacks. Officials said 7 attackers died Friday, six of them by suicide bombs and one in a shootout with the police. Intelligence officials released the name and photo of the possible eighth man. Abdeslam Salam, a 26-year-old man from Brussels is one of three brothers apparently involved in the attacks.
One of Salam’s brothers committed suicide on the Boulevard Voltaire during the attacks. Other brother was apparently among the seven people arrested by Belgian officials in Molenbeek on Saturday, a French newspaper reported.
Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29 years old, was identified as one of the dead attackers in the Bataclan center. Authorities identified Mostefai from a fingerprint taken from his severed finger, which was found in the theater. He was known to the police as a short-time criminal whose felonies included driving without a license and insulting behavior toward authority.
Authorities have said that four of the seven suicide attackers have been identified so far but more names have not been released yet.
Two of the dead militants were French citizens. They had been living in Molenbeek Saint Jean, a suburb in Brussels known as a center of Islamic Radicalism. Five people connected with the Friday Night Attack have been arrested there, according to the Mayor of Molenbeek Saint Jean.
In the aftershock of the attacks, Hollande declared war on ISIS. The president of France has promised more bombing attacks toward Syria.
Source: New York Times