Arab Nations Offer Airstrikes Against ISIS: U.S. Officials

Several Arab countries have offered to carry out airstrikes against militants from the IS in Iraq and Syria, senior State Department officials said Sunday. 

The offer was disclosed by American officials traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry, who is approaching the end of a weeklong trip that was intended to mobilize international support for the campaign against ISIS. ’There have been offers both to Centcom and to the Iraqis of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action,’ said one of the officials, who used the acronym for the US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

Kerry, who is in Paris to attend an international conference on providing aid to the new Iraqi government, has already visited Baghdad; Amman, Jordan; Jidda, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Cairo.