U.S. military aircraft carried out airstrikes on Islamist militants besieging Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, the Pentagon announced Friday.
The airstrikes targeted artillery being used by militants of the Islamic State extremist group against Kurdish forces defending Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, the Pentagon said. It said the artillery was used “near U.S. personnel.”

The U.S. action came after President Obama authorized airstrikes against Sunni Muslim extremists who punctured Kurdish defenses in a powerful offensive in northern Iraq on Thursday. Obama also sent U.S. military aircraft to drop food and water to besieged Iraqi civilians in the region.
Obama, in a statement delivered at the White House late Thursday, said that strikes would be launched against extremist convoys “should they move toward” the Kurdish capital of Irbil, where the United States maintains a consulate and a joint operations center with the Iraqi military.
“We intend to take action if they threaten our facilities anywhere in Iraq . . . including Irbil and Baghdad,” he said.
Authorization for airdrops — an initial round of which was completed just before Obama spoke — and for potential airstrikes was a major development in the Iraq crisis that began in June.
A senior administration official described the airstrike authorization as “narrow,” but outlined a number of broad contingencies in which they could be launched, including a possible threat to U.S. personnel in Baghdad from possible breaches in a major dam Islamist forces seized Thursday that could flood the Iraqi capital.
U.S. aircraft also are authorized to launch airstrikes if the military determines that Iraqi government and Kurdish forces are unable to break the siege that has stranded tens of thousands of civilians belonging to the minority Yazidi sect atop a barren mountain outside the northern town of Sinjar.
“As we can provide air support to relieve that pressure, the president has given the military the authority to do so,” the senior official said. He said that congressional leaders had been consulted, but that Obama had the legal authority as commander in chief to launch the strikes to protect U.S. personnel and national security interests.
Obama has sent more than 700 U.S. troops to Iraq since June to protect the U.S. Embassy and international airport in Baghdad and facilities in Irbil, and to assess the capabilities of Iraqi forces.
But he repeated his pledge that no ground combat troops would be returned to Iraq, where the last U.S. forces withdrew at the end of 2011.
“I know many of you are concerned about any military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these,” he said in remarks directed at the American people. “I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.”
In a statement on the initial airdrops of assistance to the Sinjar civilians, the Defense Department said: “This mission was conducted from multiple airbases within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility and included one C-17 and two C-130 aircraft that together dropped a total of 72 bundles of supplies. They were escorted by two F/A-18s also from an airbase within Central Command; the supply mission did not require any U.S. ground forces.”
The Central Command includes most of the Middle East and South Asia, where the United States maintains military installations.