US planes hit jihadists near Baghdad

Baghdad: The United States has bombed militants near Baghdad in support of Iraqi forces, striking close to the capital for the first time in its expanded campaign against Islamic State jihadists.

But in a sign of their growing strength, a monitoring group said the jihadists had managed to bring down a Syrian warplane conducting strikes over their stronghold of Raqa in north-central Syria.

The US air strike against IS fighters in the Sadr al-Yusufiyah area, 25 kilometres from Baghdad, came as world diplomats pledged to support Iraq in its fight against the militants and less than a week after US President Barack Obama ordered a "relentless" war against IS. "US military forces continued to attack (IS) terrorists in Iraq, employing attack and fighter aircraft to conduct two air strikes Sunday and Monday in support of Iraqi security forces near Sinjar and southwest of Baghdad," the US Central Command said in a statement.

"The air strike southwest of Baghdad was the first strike taken as part of our expanded efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions to hit (IS) targets as Iraqi forces go on offence, as outlined in the president's speech last Wednesday."

The strikes destroyed six IS vehicles near Sinjar and an IS position southwest of Baghdad that had been firing on Iraqi forces. They bring the number of US air strikes across Iraq to 162. Iraqi security spokesman Lieutenant General Qassem Atta welcomed the expanded American action, saying the US "carried out an important strike against an enemy target in Sadr al-Yusufiyah."

IS bans art, music at Mosul schools
Mosul: The extremist-held Iraqi city of Mosul is set to usher in a new school year. But unlike years past, there will be no art or music. Classes about history, literature and Christianity have been "permanently annulled." The Islamic State group has declared patriotic songs blasphemous and ordered that certain pictures be torn out of textbooks. But instead of compliance, Iraq's second largest city has — at least so far — responded to the Sunni militants' demands with silence.

Although the extremists stipulated that the school year would begin September 9, pupils have uniformly not shown up for class, according to residents who spoke anonymously because of safety concerns.