Peshmerga fighters stand guard at Mosul Dam in northern Iraq after retaking the dam from ISIS militants, August 21, 2014.

The United States launched its first air strikes in Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland, bombing militants near a key dam on the Euphrates River, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

“At the request of the government of Iraq, US military forces attacked ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) terrorists near Haditha in Anbar province in support of Iraqi security forces and Sunni tribes protecting the Haditha dam,” the U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

“We conducted these strikes to prevent terrorists from further threatening the security of the dam, which remains under control of Iraqi Security Forces, with support from Sunni tribes,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.

“The potential loss of control of the dam or a catastrophic failure of the dam — and the flooding that might result — would have threatened U.S. personnel and facilities in and around Baghdad, as well as thousands of Iraqi citizens,” he added.

It was the first time that Washington had carried out air strikes in support of Sunni Arab tribal militia since it launched its air campaign in Iraq on August 8.

Previous strikes had been mainly in support of Kurdish forces in the north, although late last month it gave limited air support to the army and Shiite militia further south in breaking an ISIS siege of the Shiite Turkmen town of Amerli.

Dams have been a key target for the militants. There has been major fighting around Iraq’s largest dam on the Tigris River north of militant-held second city Mosul which has been a major focus of the U.S. air campaign.

There have been repeated attempts by ISIS to take Haditha Dam.

 
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