Britain and France launch strikes on Isis facility in Syria

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

British and French war planes have bombed an underground facility in Syria that was used by Isis militants to store weapons, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

The strikes on Saturday evening hit the site, thought to be used by Isis militants to store weapons and explosives, in a mountainous area north of the Syrian city of Palmyra, according to a statement from the UK government. French jets joined the strikes by RAF Typhoon FGR4s.

“This action shows our . . . determination to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies, to stamp out any resurgence of Daesh and their dangerous and violent ideologies in the Middle East,” said UK defence secretary John Healey.

The ministry said there were no civilian inhabitants in the area around the targeted site and no indication that any risk had been posed to civilians. It added that initial assessments suggested the “target was engaged successfully”.

The joint UK-French strike comes after the US launched a wave of strikes in December on what it said were Isis targets in Syria in retaliation for an ambush that killed two American soldiers and a civilian interpreter.

US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said the attack on US personnel was “an ambush by a lone Isis gunman”. It occurred during a counterterrorism operation, according to the Pentagon.

Centcom said the subsequent US strikes hit more than 70 targets and that it had since conducted 10 operations in Syria and Iraq that had killed or detained 23 “terrorist operatives”.

Isis militants launched a blitz across Iraq and Syria a decade ago and seized a swath of land about the size of Britain.

Although the group was driven from its remaining territorial strongholds in 2019 it still operates a network of cells in Syria that have continued to carry out attacks.

Syria has struggled with a recent uptick in attacks by Isis-affiliated or extremist militants, including the deadly bombing of a mosque in an Alawite neighbourhood in Homs last month and a suicide bomber who killed a member of the security services in Aleppo on New Year’s Eve.

Government security forces have said they have carried out raids against Isis cells over recent months, as President Ahmed al-Sharaa seeks to assert security control over the country.

Since seizing power just over a year ago, Sharaa has worked hard to court friends and allies, including the US, after decades of Assad family rule and 14 years of ruinous civil war left Syria internationally isolated.

In November he became the first Syrian president to visit the White House since Syria’s independence in 1946, meeting US President Donald Trump and formally joining the 89-country coalition to defeat Isis.