Australia to launch air strikes in Syria, take more refugees

Australia’s six F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighters based in Dubai have already been bombing targets in Iraq since October last year, but it will now move across the border.

CANBERRA // Australia will launch air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria within days and resettle, said prime minister Tony Abbott yesterday.

The country will also take another 12,000 refugees in response to the deepening humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.

This is in addition to Australia’s usual annual refugee intake of 13,750.

The government will also pay an additional 44 million Australian dollars (Dh113.7m) to keep 240,000 Syrians and Iraqis in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, bringing the Australian contribution to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq and Syria to 230 million Australian dollars since 2011.

Australia’s six F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighters based in Dubai have been bombing targets in Iraq since October last year. Australia is moving across the border, where the legality of air strikes is less clear, at the request of the United States.

“There can be no stability and no end to the persecution and suffering in the Middle East until the Daesh death cult is degraded and ultimately destroyed,” Mr Abbott said. “This is very much in Australia’s national interest.”

Air chief marshal Mark Binskin, Australia’s defence force chief, said the first Australian air strikes against Syrian targets would be launched this week.

“Combat operations are dangerous by the nature of what the men and women are doing,” Mr Binskin said. “I don’t envisage a marked increase in the risks of operating where we’re going to operate in Syria.”

The government can commit to the Syrian campaign without asking parliament. However, the opposition Labor Party supported Australian military involvement in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government, it questioned the legality and purpose of extending the campaign into Syria,

“What’s the objective here? What’s the end game? It’s not enough to be speaking in sound bites about what an evil organisation Daesh is,” opposition deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said.

Richard Di Natale, leader of the minor Greens party, said: “The decision ... to drop bombs on the Syrian people is going to make a bad situation much worse.”

* Associated Press