Australian Defense Force strikes ’ISIL’ Terrorist Hideouts

Local Editor

The Australian Defense Force had released vision of RAAF's F/A-18 Hornets fighter-bombers in action against "ISIL" forces in Iraq.

The vision shows a series of raids, which had been conducted as parts of Operation OKRA over the past six months.

The first bombing shown in the video, was an attack on a major logistics hub in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which was used to distribute weapons and fighters from Syria through IS controlled areas in Iraq.

Other vision shows a coordinated attack on two buildings housing "ISIL" fighters by two bombers, which managed to destroy the targets without damaging any surrounding civilian buildings.

"Many considerations are made when conducting strikes in built up areas," read a statement released with the video which was posted on the Air Force website.

"Built up areas, such as towns, are areas in which it is important to be extremely accurate with intelligence gathering to prevent collateral damage to neighboring properties or innocent parties.

"The F/A-18 Hornets carries a range of weapons that have different amounts of explosive in them, enabling the crew to select the type of weapon that is best suited to destroy the target, and minimize collateral damage.

Last week an Australian warplane conducted the first air strike on "ISIL" in Syria, destroying an armored personnel carrier with a precision guided bomb.

Former Defense Minister Kevin Andrews said the decision to extend RAAF air task group missions from Iraq into Syria was a logical extension of existing commitments which have seen combat aircraft conduct 408 missions since last October, dropping 515 bombs.

Few details of the first strike in Syria have been released.

The mission occurred in eastern Syria on September 14. Two RAAF F/A-18 Hornets spotted the armored personnel carrier hidden in an ISIS compound, Andrews said.

That information was relayed back to the Combined Air Operations Centre in Qatar by way of the RAAF Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft.

CAOC authorized the attack to proceed and one Hornet dropped a single precision guided weapon.

At the time Andrews couldn't say if there were casualties, though that was likely if there were personnel in the carrier.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team