Syrian aircraft bomb Sunni militant targets inside Iraq

Syrian government aircraft bombed Sunni militant targets inside Iraq on Tuesday, further broadening the Middle Eastern crisis a day after Israeli warplanes and rockets struck targets inside Syria.

Iraqi state media initially reported that the attacks near Iraq’s western border with Syria were carried out by U.S. drones, a claim that was quickly and forcefully denied by the Pentagon.

Separately, the Pentagon said that 90 additional U.S. troops arrived in Iraq, part of up to 300 military advisers whom President Obama said last week he would deploy there to assess the situation before taking any further U.S. military action. A statement said that U.S. aircraft are now flying 30 to 35 manned and unmanned daily surveillance flights over Iraq.

The main U.S. effort Tuesday was on the diplomatic front, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry traveled to Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, to urge leaders there to remain part of Iraq. As they met, fighters from local Sunni tribes, apparently working with militant fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), wrested control of at least part of Iraq’s largest oil refinery from government troops.

“We are facing a new reality and a new Iraq,” Massoud Barzani, president of the semiautonomous Kurdish government, told Kerry at the start of their meeting.

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