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MOSUL AIRPORT, Iraq (AP) Iraq's air force struck Islamic State targets inside Syria for the first time on Friday as Iraqi troops on the ground pushed into western Mosul, the last major urban stronghold held by the Sunni militant group in Iraq.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the airstrikes in a statement, saying the air force hit the border towns of Boukamal and Husseibah, strikes that came in response to recent bombings in Baghdad claimed by IS and linked to the militants' operations in Syria.

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Iraq strikes IS in Syria as Iraqi forces enter western Mosul - Sentinel-Tribune

National Guard veteran Amie Muller believed deployments to Iraq caused the cancer that killed her.

She worked and lived next to burn pits that billowed toxic smoke night and day at an air base in northern Iraq. After returning to Minnesota, she began experiencing health problems usually not seen in a woman in her 30s.

Muller died a week ago, nine months after being diagnosed with Stage III pancreatic cancer. On Friday, more than 800 of her friends and family gathered at a memorial service in Woodbury to remember the life of the 36-year-old mother of three. A pastor noted her loss was both painful and seemingly incomprehensible.

I wish there was a simple way to explain what has happened to Amie. Why Amie is gone, said Pastor Lisa Renlund. Life truly isnt that simple. It can get messy. It can feel complicated. It can seem unfair.

But others also are remembering Mullers battle to win recognition from the U.S. government for victims of the burn pits, which have the potential of becoming the Iraq and Afghanistan wars equivalent of the Vietnam Wars Agent Orange. It took nearly three decades for the U.S. government to eventually link the defoliant used in Vietnam to cancer.

Muller first told her story in the Star Tribune last year shortly after she was diagnosed.

In an interview in August, she spoke about the frustrations of a life put on hold. Fatigued from chemotherapy and complications from medical procedures, she also talked about getting the word out about what she believed is the burn pits toxic legacy.

Its kind of like what youd imagine what hospice would feel like, where you are just waiting and waiting and you dont have any energy, she said. But I want to make sure other people are getting their voices heard, too.

Flames stoked with jet fuel

In 2005 and in 2007, Muller was deployed to Balad, Iraq, with the Minnesota Air National Guard, embedded with a military intelligence squadron. The burn pit near her living quarters there was one of the most notorious of the more than 230 that were constructed at military bases across Iraq and Afghanistan before their use was restricted in 2009. Items ranging from Styrofoam to metals and plastics to electrical equipment to human body parts were incinerated, the flames stoked with jet fuel.

Covering more than 10 acres, Balads burn pit operated at all hours and consumed an estimated 100 to 200 tons of waste a day. It was hastily constructed upwind from the base, and its plumes consistently drifted toward the 25,000 troops stationed there.

Muller fatigued easily after returning home and began to wonder whether a host of ailments from migraines to fibromyalgia were connected to her military service at Balad. She was diagnosed with cancer last May.

Julie Tomaska deployed with Muller in 2005 and 2007 and the two lived side by side. Shortly after coming home, Tomaska, too, suffered from chronic fatigue, headaches and digestive problems. Her disability claim with the VA was approved with a diagnosis of environmental exposures.

The two became almost inseparable after Muller was diagnosed. Tomaska helped navigate the paperwork for Mullers disability claims and attended treatments with her at the Mayo Clinic, shooting selfies in the exam room.

She was at her friends bedside when she died. Now, Tomaska and Mullers family hope to establish a foundation for military families affected by pancreatic cancer.

Burn Pits Act

I promised her that I would make sure that everybody knew about this, she said. Its hard to be so proud and happy about the military accomplishments you made when you feel like you died because of this, and because were having friends drop like flies.

When we came home we felt like we were lucky and it just doesnt feel like that anymore.

The Department of Veterans Affairs position on burn pit exposure has not changed. It believes research has not established evidence of long-term health problems.

But there has been movement. A registry for service members based on where they were stationed during deployments now includes more than 100,000 people.

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., introduced bipartisan legislation, the Helping Veterans Exposed to Burn Pits Act, that would create a center of excellence within the VA to better understand the health effects associated with burn pits and to treat veterans who become sick after exposure.

Klobuchar said she is encouraged by work being done at the Minneapolis VA looking at links between exposure to toxic substances and the use of anti-inflammatories for treatment.

Whats important to me is that we keep doing this research and we dont close our eyes and pretend that its just a coincidence that these veterans came home with these illnesses, she said. Its a sad chapter, whether it was Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome, that people had to wait this long. We dont want this to happen again with burn pits.

Joseph Hickman, a veteran and author of The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of Americas Soldiers, sees the legislation as progress but still worries that many veterans are being stonewalled and their benefits claims delayed, often until after they have died.

When we sent these veterans to war, we didnt have any questions for them. We just sent them off and had total faith in them, Hickman said. Now they are coming home and they are being questioned by the VA and the [Department of Defense] and a lot of them are being told they are not being honest about their illnesses. We had so much faith in them when they left, weve got to have faith in them now and believe them.

Showed heart and grace

At Mullers memorial service Friday, honor guards stood solemnly, their heads bowed, next to a portrait and an urn containing her remains. The Patriot Guard stood outside in a growing snowstorm as mourners entered for the services at Crossroads Church in Woodbury.

Photos of Mullers life that included Caribbean family vacations and military deployments and training were projected on giant screens in the sanctuary.

Retired Lt. Col. Audra Flanagan noted that Muller was trained as a military photojournalist. She created a program to honor fallen service members by providing a video and photographic record for family members. She covered services for those who were killed in action or took their own lives, documenting the dignified transfer of remains, military funerals and honor guards.

She covered services for a Tuskegee airman and for a soldier killed in the Fort Hood mass shooting. As a graphic artist, she designed the states Gold Star license plate for spouses and parents of military members killed in active service.

No one could have honored our fallen service members with the same heart and grace as Amie, Flanagan said.

Muller will be buried Monday at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

Read more:
Hundreds say goodbye to Amie Muller, who sounded alarm over toxic risks for Iraq veterans - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The security forces did basic mine clearance here when they pushed Isil out, but that is only to military standard, which means clearing key routes. None of the houses or surrounding areas have been cleared. We dont have the manpower to do it quickly enough, and in the meantime, people are getting killed and injured.

The male householder, Jamal Mustapha, seems grateful for the warnings, and promises he will not let his children wander outside again. However, it is not unusual for local MAG workers to have to plead with householders not to enter houses which are known to be booby-trapped.

Many locals try to defuse the mines themselves, with one man recently putting 60 devices on a bonfire outside his home. He put petrol on them and drove away, says Sutton. When they blew up, his entire house was destroyed and 14 neighbours houses damaged too. Its fair to say hes not popular right now.

For most, the message only gets through the hard way. In the village of Wardak, a freshly dug grave in the cemetery holds the mangled remains of Ghazwan Salin, a 14-year-old shepherd boy killed by a landmine last month. His father, Saadla, 52, stifles tears as he describes the huge bang that echoed through the village just after lunchtime.

My son had been dancing with his younger sister here in the lounge, then he went out with the sheep, Saadla says. Wed been back here for four months, and had never had any accidents. Then we heard the explosion, and I ran barefoot in the direction of the sound. The only part of my sons body that wasnt burnt was his head.

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Why these British men are risking their lives to clear Iraq's landmines - Telegraph.co.uk

Iraq Takes the Fight Against ISIS to Syria Wall Street Journal (subscription) MOSUL, IraqIraq's air force on Friday carried out its first-ever strikes against Islamic State in neighboring Syria, the country's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said, marking a dramatic escalation in its effort to roll back the insurgency by ...

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Iraq Takes the Fight Against ISIS to Syria - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

It got real for his newlywed wife when Tim Darms showed her plans for the ward set aside for ISIS terrorists in the Iraq field hospital he would help build.

It got real for him on his first day at the site, 15 kilometers outside siege-wracked Mosul, when he felt the percussion of two bombs exploding in the city.

"You didn't feel the explosion," he said. "It was more like a sound you could feel." He turned to see smoke mushrooming in the sky.

Darms, 28, is a project engineer for Water Mission, the North Charleston-based nonprofit dedicated to providing safe drinking water to people in developing countries and disaster areas. The organization was asked by Samaritan's Purse to support construction of its emergency facility in Mosul, Iraq.

The Purse, like the Mission, is a Christian international relief organization. The hospital is treating civilians and soldiers from all sides. Darms' job was to engineer safe water equipment and lines.

Mosul was a city of more than 1 million people when the deadly terrorist group overran it in 2014. Iraqi troops, supported by coalition forces including U.S. military, have battled to re-take it since October, in a campaign considered the largest since the Iraq war and the largest under way anywhere on the planet.

On Thursday, the coalition made a significant gain, wresting control of the airport.

About half of all casualties so far have been civilians. The first ones to come to the hospital as Darms worked were a woman with her grade-school-age daughter. The girl had been disemboweled by an IED, an improvised explosive device.

The engineers' escort was a tough Iraqi who could fend for them. Darms remembers the hurt in the man's eye as he rushed to find supplies that doctors were calling for to help the girl. She later died.

Another mom came in with two daughters. Each girl had her left side laced with shrapnel. They had been sitting on the same side at a dinner table when a car bomb went off outside.

Despite the executions, other atrocities and refugees fleeing, more than a half-million people still live in Mosul. Darms was struck when he arrived how the highway was busy with commerce and travel in and out of the city. The day before, ISIS forces fired on a gravel truck supplying the construction.

"Everything is more complex than portrayed," Darms said. "There's still an economy. People are still living their lives," he said. But "in a moment you could lose half your family."

Madisson and Tim Darms had been married half a year when operations vice president Seth Womble, his low-key boss, came into the engineering room at the North Charleston headquarters last fall, and began his usual spiel, "What about this..." Then he said, "Who wants to go to Mosul for Christmas?"

The risks were as daunting as they were obvious. But a job that entails responding to disasters is inherently risky. Part of the hiring process at the mission is to instill that expectation, Womble said. Darms, like all his people, was ready. They work at Water Mission because of a calling to help where they are needed most.

Still, "Iraq was a little different. It was our first time in a war zone," Womble said. He told Darms, "you might want to check with your wife before you miss your first Christmas."

Madisson Darms, though, is a physical therapist, and the calling is mutual for the West Ashley couple. She said if God could send his son to help at Christmas, she could send her husband.

"She's awesome. She's a wonderful wife," Darms said.

The month in Iraq wasn't easy. Darms, quiet-voiced and even-keeled, tried to share when the couple communicated, but at first he couldn't bring himself to tell her a few details: how a car bomb had gone off a mile from the Erbil, Iraq, site where they prepped to build the hospital or how he was asked to redesign the specs to include a chemical weapon decontamination shower.

When he returned home, though, the couple sat together as he shared it all, showed her photographs of the people who had befriended him, the faces of the two Iraqi engineers one Muslim and one Christian who had worked side by side with him. And the horrors.

"Just being sad about it," he said. While Darms trained his replacement the day before he left, a drone flew overhead. The security forces fired at it but missed. The next day, he heard after he returned home, two rockets exploded in an empty field about a quarter mile from the hospital and the friends he left behind.

"Being home and hearing that was the first time I was overwhelmed by fear," he said.

Would he go back? The nod is understated, businesslike. "Yeah." Madisson and he both plan to go overseas, somewhere with the greatest need and the best fit for their skills, he said. "The Lord leading."

Reach Bo Petersen Reporter at Facebook, @bopete on Twitter or 1-843-937-5744.

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North Charleston engineer helps build hospital in war-wracked Mosul, Iraq - Charleston Post Courier