In response to last Friday's Paris attacks, which have so far caused 129 deaths and about 300 injuries, on Sunday evening the French Air Force carried out a series of attacks against Isis positions in Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State. This was announced by the Ministry of Defense in Paris, specifying that a total of 12 aircraft were used, including 10 fighter jets. France had already been engaged in military activities in Syria for some time, and this was among other things indicated as the main reason behind the attacks on Friday evening. President François Hollande, speaking immediately after the massacres, had said that the French response would be "determined and ruthless".
The French fighters dropped about twenty bombs on as many strategic objectives, focusing in particular on an ISIS command center and training ground. The planes took off from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Anti-Isis activists in Raqqa have made it known via Twitter that most of the nerve centers of the Islamic State "have been bombed" and that the city finds itself without electricity in several places. Again according to information released by groups opposing the Caliphate, the stadium, a political building, a museum and a hospital were hit, among others. However, the official press release from the French Ministry of Defense speaks of only two infrastructures managed by Isis: a training camp and a command and recruitment post also used as a weapons and ammunition depot. There is no news of any casualties yet.
The entire operation, the Paris Government let us know, “has been carried out in coordination with US forces“. The latter, according to the Wall Street Journal, would have provided important intelligence data for the raids on Syrian territory. Washington and Paris had also announced on Sunday afternoon that, after a telephone call between US Defense Secretary Ash Carter and French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, they had found an agreement on the "concrete steps that the American and French military forces must take henceforth to intensify their action against ISIS”.
Meanwhile in Antalya, Türkiye, US President Barack Obama and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the G20, they had a half-hour talk at the end of which, without overcoming the main reasons for division, they defined the achievement of an agreement on the conclusion of the war in Syria as "imperative", recognizing the diplomatic progress made yesterday in Vienna for a political transition with the mediation of the UN.
The Italian premier also spoke from Antalya Matteo Renzi: “The reaction has produced disasters like Libya – he said -. We need a strategy. Some of the terrorists in the various cases of attacks that have taken place in Europe come from our suburbs. They grew up in our schools, they are our compatriots, they don't come from outside. And they hit places of daily life. Theatre, stadium, restaurant. They want to kill us. When they can't get our death they want to change our life. Make us live in fear."
