in their target? reporter: well, erin, you have to be clear, buildings were once called clinical hospital, no longer used in that way by isis. they take over parts of the civilian infrastructure and turn them into at times prisons or other things unimaginable to the normal human being. we don t quite know what those buildings have become. we don t know the level of intelligence gathering that the west has inside of raqqa. they ve been doing all they can to infiltrate that city. you have to ask yourself too, sadly, given the advice ral level of anger inside france, understandably who they have chosen to hit tonight, this is a massive bombardment compareded to what we ve seen in past nights. there have been nights when dozens of air strikes were reported. i m not sure they reached this level in this short period of time and you can t ignore the coincident of how close this has
and this is what happened exactly what happened. so we need to do that first and to increase, to put more resources to really try to dismantle the structures ever command and training facilities of isis which made it possible for several terrorist attacks in europe, including the paris attacks. jim shuuto, let me ask you something to take a step back. when people watching here there have been 7,000 or so air strikes in the past year or so. they know that a lot of those have been on areas near raqqa, they can be for given for asking what else is there left to hit. there are significant leaders left to hit. when you think of striking jihadi john on friday, an operational leader in isis, it shows you both the challenges and the difficulties and the benefits of this kind of air campaign. yes they have intelligence and those strikes can decapitate.
kurdish militia force, whose capital i m standing in right now against sinjar, which cleared isis out indeed and design d to cut off one of the key supply routes to raqqa. part of a broader strategy. i have to point out on twitter, some people who support isis suggest similarly after death of the jordanian pilot, there were air strikes and this could be a knee jeerk reaction from france. right now as we speak, the french air force in action over raqqa, highly symbolic, effective moment against isis. erin? please is a with mstay with . i want to bring in jim shuuto, unclear how militarily significant it will be and of course it could be the beginning of a bigger french response. we don t know. we don t know the effect yet. first of all it is an
we re more than a year into this air campaign and while essentially isis has advanced in iraq in syria has been stopped, they control large portions. with the battle principlely from the air, it is difficult to gain back the territory isis has under control. the big question becomes, does this change the specifics of the strategy? are large numbers of ground forces going to go on? we haven t seen that yet. this could be the first day of a sustained campaign followed by ground operations. to this point it is an extension greater french participation in air strikes that have already been under way for some time. nick, and social media which does not mean this is happening or not happening, there are reports of strikes hitting civilian targets, for example, things like a hospital in raqqa. we don t know if that s the case yet. but would that be something that would surprise you if these are strikes that are not so specific
been, where they have hit and the accuracy of targeting and that s something else to be debated. it s clear according to what jim has been reporting too, that the americans are quite willing to share their raw intelligence about what s happening inside raqqa and it will be improving the accuracy what the french be able to do. talk of a ground operation, i have to be honest, we have to put that very far away from where we are right now. this is a hard deal here. even the noigs of building up the syrian kurdish forces who are close to raqqa, to do that kind of things, that s months off. sunni arabs, the kind of offensive you have to move to take it back from isis, have any idea of the local population after isis had moved out, that s still months off. they need weapons and need training and even insertion of american special forces is going to face towards raqqa in the imminent future. this sounds and feels like an