Iraq confirms Syrian air strikes against jihadists

The Iraqi prime minister has confirmed the news that Syria carried out air strikes on militants inside Iraqi territory this week. Nouri Maliki said Syrian fighter jets had bombed militant positions around the border town of Qaim on Tuesday. While Iraq did not ask for the raid, he added, it 'welcomed’ any such strike against the Islamist group ISIL. ISIL militants have seized large parts of Iraq this month including the 2nd largest city, Mosul. The government has struggled to hold back the militants' advance from the north and west and has also been receiving support from Iran, with whom its Shia Muslim majority has close links. The US, which also backs the government, has stressed that the militants can only be defeated by Iraq's own forces. Maliki will seek to form a new government in an effort to maintain national unity when parliament assembles again next week in Baghdad. In another development, reports say that a unit of al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, pledged allegiance to ISIL in the Syrian town of Albu Kamal, near the Iraqi border. Until recently, the Nusra Front had been fighting in Syria against ISIL, which it sees as harming its cause with its brutality and extremism. Maliki said Iraq was buying Russian warplanes, which would arrive in a few days, as the US kept delaying the sale of F16 jets, according to BBC.