Cost of US war on ISIL passes $2 billion mark: Pentagon
The cost of military operations by the United States against the ISIL Takfiri terrorists in Iraq and Syria has surpassed the $2 billion mark, the Pentagon reports.
"As of Mar. 26, 2015, the total cost of operations related to ISIL since kinetic operations started on Aug. 8, 2014, is $1.96 billion and the average daily cost is $8.5 million,” Defense Department spokesman Bill Urban told The Hill on Thursday.
In December, the total cost of the US operations on the ISIL passed the $1 billion mark, according to The Hill.
A large chunk of the cost was incurred by US airstrikes targeting the ISIL terrorists in both Iraq and Syria, the report added.
US President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes on ISIL targets in Iraq in mid-August after Washington’s interests were threatened in the crisis-hit country. Obama ordered airstrikes against ISIL targets in Syria in September.
The US and some of its Arab allies -- Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates -- have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.
The US-led campaign has been widely criticized for failing to effectively limit the advance of the militants.
In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" aired on March 29, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that US-led airstrikes against the ISIL group had not only not pushed back the Takfiri terrorists, but on the contrary, they had increased in number in the region.
The ISIL terrorists, many of whom were initially trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.
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