BAGHDAD: US Secretary of State John Kerry has said US warplanes destroyed dozens of trucks smuggling oil into Iraq and Turkey, depriving the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) of a significant amount of funding.
In an interview with France 2, Kerry said the US conducted air strikes this week that took out 161 oil trucks, “which is how Daesh is getting its money.” Daesh is the Arabic acronym of ISIL. “It’s smuggling oil across the borders into Iraq, into Turkey, and it provides a very significant amount of money,” Kerry said.
In his remarks at the 30th Overseas Security Advisory Council Annual Briefing in Washington on Wednesday, Kerry said a new campaign will deprive ISIL of its smuggling to Iraq and Turkey from which they get “literally hundreds of millions of dollars.”
In Baghdad, Col. Steve Warren, spokesman of the anti-ISIL operation in Iraq and Syria, told reporters on Wednesday four A-10 attack jets and two AC-130 warplanes hit 116 trucks in the first airstrike on ISIL’s oil smuggling convoy. The warplanes took off from Turkey.
To minimize risks to civilians, Col. Warren said low-flying planes dropped leaflets 45 minutes prior to the strike. The leaflets said: “Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them.” Warren said these air strikes will reduce ISIL’s ability to transport its stolen oil products.
In an interview with Fox News, Kerry reiterated that the US jets took out 161 oil trucks as part of a campaign to diminish ISIL’s ability to “get revenue and to spread its evil.” It was not immediately clear why there is a discrepancy in the numbers provided by the secretary and Pentagon.
The campaign is called “Operation Tidal Wave II,” inspired by a similar operation to remove Nazis’ oil smuggling tankers in Romania during the World War II.
Col. Warren said the US was initially hitting infrastructure targets and acknowledged that they were only “minimally effective.”
“We would strike pieces of the oil infrastructure that were easily repaired,” he said. After some more study, the US decided to take out the distribution network.
He said although these oil trucks are being used for operations that support ISIL, the truck drivers are probably not members of ISIL. “So we had to figure out a way around that. We’re not in this business to kill civilians, we’re in this business to defeat ISIL.” He noted that the smuggled oil through Turkey and Iraq funds more than 50 percent of ISIL’s operations.
Kerry also spoke about an operation in coming days with Turkey to flush out ISIL militants from 60-mile stretch of territory controlled by ISIL. Both countries have been drafting a military strategy for months now and now they say they’re on the brink of kicking it off.
