"Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them. Warning: airstrikes are coming. Oil trucks will be destroyed. Get away from your oil trucks immediately. Do not risk your life."
"In Al-Bukamal, we destroyed 116 tanker trucks, which we believe will reduce ISIL's ability to transport its stolen oil products.
"This is our first strike against tanker trucks, and to minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike. We did a show of force, by -- we had aircraft essentially buzz the trucks at low altitude.
"We combine these leaflet drops with very low altitude passes of some of our attack aviation, which sends a very powerful message," the colonel added.
"These trucks, while although they are being used for operations that support ISIL, the truck drivers, themselves, probably not members of ISIL; they're probably just civilians.
"So we had to figure out a way around that. We're not in this business to kill civilians, we're in this business to stop ISIL -- to defeat ISIL.
"So we had to go through that whole process of one, determining whether or not we felt it was in our best interest to strike these trucks. And then once we determined that, yes, it is in our interest to strike these trucks, how do we go about ensuring that we're able to mitigate the potential of civilian casualties? And these things take time.
"We know the oil funds more than 50 percent of ISIL's operations. This is something we want to take away from them. That we want -- that we need to take this away from them so that they're -- so they're operations are more difficult to conduct," Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve said.
Funny, I don't remember the Islamic State warning anyone before its recent terrorist attack on Paris.
No comments:
Post a Comment