Canada’s involvement in the war against Islamic State militants began in earnest Sunday when two CF-18 warplanes conducted their first strike missions.
After days of poor, cloudy weather obscuring their targets, two CF-18 jetfighters dropped laser-guided bombs in the vicinity of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, a place infamous for U.S. soldiers as the scene of the heaviest fighting during the decade-long American war in Iraq.
The Iraqi government lost control of the city in January when Islamic State fighters clashed with police following the withdrawal of the Iraqi army from all of Anbar province.
Fallujah has since been a major stronghold of Islamic State militants.
Word of the airstrikes did not come from the Canadian task force headquarters in Kuwait, but in a brief statement from Defence Minister Rob Nicholson’s office in Ottawa.
The minister noted that the fighters were refuelled on the way to their target by a Polaris C-150 jet. All three aircraft returned to base without incident, Nicholson said.
The combat mission, which began with the first patrols last week, has been carried out under a heavy blanket of secrecy with the Canadian military denying media access to the air bases where the CF-18s, the refueller and two CP-140 Aurora surveillance planes are located, citing security concerns of their Kuwaiti hosts.
