PARIS: France and Russia carried out air strikes on targets of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in northern Syria on Tuesday, punishing the militant group for attacks in Paris and against a Russian airliner that together killed 353 people.

The IS has claimed responsibility for a coordinated onslaught in Paris on Friday and the downing of a Russian charter jet over Sinai on Oct 31, saying they were in retaliation for French and Russian air raids in Iraq and Syria.

Still reeling from the Paris carnage that killed 129 people, most of them youths, France formally requested European Union assistance in its fight against the militants.

Paris invokes an EU treaty clause to ask for assistance in operations in Iraq and Syria

In Moscow, the Kremlin acknowledged that a bomb had destroyed a Russian airliner last month, killing 224 people. President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria.

“Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued,” he said. “It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

Western officials said Russia launched a “significant number” of strikes in Syria on Tuesday, hitting the IS stronghold of Raqqa. In a separate action, French warplanes targeted Raqqa for a second day.

Russia began air strikes in Syria at the end of September. It has always said its main target is IS, but most of its bombs in the past have hit territory held by other groups opposed to its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In Brussels, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked the EU’s mutual assistance clause for the first time since the 2009 Lisbon Treaty introduced the possibility, saying he expected help with French operations in Syria, Iraq and Africa. “This is firstly a political act,” Le Drian told a news conference after a meeting of EU defence chiefs.

The 28 EU member states accepted the French request but it was not immediately clear what assistance would be forthcoming.

Mr Hollande, who has declared a state of emergency, met visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday to press his call for the US-led and Russian-led coalitions to join forces.

Mr Kerry told reporters afterwards that IS was losing territory in Syria and Iraq, but said increased coordination with Moscow would require progress in a political drive to end the war. That process is complicated by a US demand that Mr Assad steps down as president.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Paris would spare no expense to reinforce and equip its security forces and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism, even though that was bound to involve breaching European budget deficit limits.

“We have to face up to this, and Europe ought to understand,” he told France Inter radio.

The European Commission said it would show understanding to France if additional security spending pushed up its deficit.

As France geared up for a long war, the British prime minister said he would present a “comprehensive strategy” for tackling IS to parliament. British warplanes have been bombing the militants in Iraq, but not Syria.

“It is in Syria, in Raqqa, that ISIL has its headquarters and it is from Raqqa that some of the main threats against this country are planned and orchestrated,” David Cameron said, referring to IS by one of its many acronyms. “Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake.”

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2015