Britain, Denmark, Belgium join military effort against Islamic State in Iraq

LONDON - Three European nations - including Britain - joined the widening U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq on Friday, even as the group's fighters renewed their attempt to overrun a strategic border city in Syria.

Britain's belated entry, seven weeks after the United States began carrying out strikes, followed an overwhelming parliamentary vote to authorize attacks. Denmark and Belgium also opted to join the fight.

But as the coalition expanded, its constraints became clear. All three countries that authorized military action Friday decided to limit their involvement to Iraq. Meanwhile, Islamic State militants demonstrated that airstrikes have failed to slow their assault on critical positions within Syria.

Along the Turkish-Syrian border, Islamic State fighters backed by artillery fire pushed toward the city of Kobane - known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab - as Syrian Kurdish forces dug in for a key test of their strength.

The United States and its Arab allies broadened their campaign to targets in Syria this week, after a drumbeat of American strikes in Iraq since early August.

But no European ally has been willing to join the Syria campaign - raising the prospect that Islamic State could try to use it as a refuge.

"Simply allowing [Islamic State] to retreat across an invisible border is no answer," said Peter Hain, a member of Parliament and former cabinet minister, during Britain's daylong debate.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, scarred by a humiliating defeat last year when he sought permission to launch strikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, did not try to win approval for attacks in Syria this time around.

Instead, he limited his proposal to Iraq, where he had a clear consensus thanks to the Iraqi government's invitation for Western help. No such invitation exists from Syria, and British opposition leader Ed Miliband has suggested he won't support widening the campaign without a U.N. resolution that is unlikely to ever come.

Friday's House of Commons vote endorsing Cameron's plan to deploy six Tornado fighter jets to Iraq was lopsided, at 524-43.

Still, there was opposition from the backbenches, both from hawks who wanted to go further, as well as from doves who insisted the country had not learned the right lessons from more than a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Cameron argued that the Islamic State was impossible to ignore, given the threat it poses to Britain.

"This is not a threat on the far side of the world. Left unchecked," Cameron said as he opened the debate, "we will face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member, with a declared and proven intention to attack our country and our people."

Cameron and others who support airstrikes were quick to differentiate Friday's vote from the last time the British Parliament authorized military action in Iraq, in 2003. Cameron stressed that there would be no boots on the ground and said the air campaign would be marked more by "patience and persistence" than "shock and awe."

The British contribution is modest, representing only a third the number of its jets that flew over Libya during the 2011 campaign against Moammar Gadhafi's government. But it is similar to the commitment of other nations that have joined the coalition against the Islamic State, including France, the Netherlands, and Australia.

While the British public was divided over joining the air campaign when the United States first launched strikes, opinion has solidified in favor of the idea in recent weeks - especially since Islamic State militants executed two American journalists and a British aid worker. At least two other Britons are known to be held by the group and have been forced to appear in Islamic State videos.

European counterterrorism officials have expressed deep concern that the Islamic State will try to carry out attacks on Western soil, perhaps employing some of the estimated 3,000 Europeans who have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight with the organization.

Cameron suggested Friday that there would be a strong case for expanding Britain's air campaign to Syria - but said that would require a separate debate.

Meanwhile, the battle in Syria rages. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that airstrikes by the United States and its Arab allies had disrupted Islamic State's command and control, logistics, and infrastructure in Syria.

But the group has continued its quest for territory. Gaining control of Kobane would give the Islamic State a hold over a major stretch of the border and open more potential supply lines, even as airstrikes seek to erode the militants' financial underpinnings.

The fighting appeared to intensify Friday after days of seesaw clashes.