International News

PARIS, (APP/AFP) – France is carrying out strikes “every
day” against Islamic State militants in Iraq, the government said Tuesday, as the country reeled from the carnage in Nice.
“There were French strikes last night in Tal Afar, not far from
Mosul,” Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio.
“We don’t announce it every day but since we are in the coalition we
are striking every day,” he said, referring to the US-led alliance engaged in an aerial campaign against IS.
IS claimed responsibility for last week’s massacre in the Riviera
city of Nice, where a man driving a truck ploughed into a crowd gathered for Bastille Day fireworks, killing 84 people.
Investigators say Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the 31-year-old Tunisian
driver, had shown “recent interest” in IS propaganda but they have no evidence he had any ties to the group.
On Wednesday, defence ministers from countries engaged in the anti-IS
coalition will meet in Washington.
Le Drian said he expected they would “push the offensive underway in
Iraq and Syria to the limit” by concentrating their strikes on the IS strongholds of Mosul in Iraq and Raqa in Syria.
“We must keep up the pressure… to definitively eradicate (IS),” he
said, while acknowledging it would “take some more time”.
“Striking in Mosul, striking in Iraq, is a way of ensuring our
security in France and, more widely, in Europe,” he added.