Afghanistan: U.S. expands airstrikes against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq --- IRBIL, Iraq — American warplanes and drones struck Islamist militants near this northern Iraqi city Friday, putting the U.S. military back in action in the skies over Iraq less than three years after the troops withdrew and President Obama declared the war over. -- The strikes were limited in scope but helped temper days of building panic across the north of the country as militants with the extremist Islamic State sliced through a string of towns and villages scattered on the outskirts of the Kurdish region and sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing for their lives. -- The airstrikes also presented the first significant challenge yet to months of unchecked expansion by the al-Qaeda offshoot, which has swept through much of Iraq and neighboring Syria over the past year, annihilating its opponents, capturing valuable resources and declaring the creation of an Islamic caliphate in a nation-size chunk of territory. -- In Washington, the Pentagon announced three separate strikes by multiple aircraft against militant positions it said were firing on Kurdish forces protecting Irbil, saying that they had “successfully eliminated” artillery, a mortar position and a convoy of extremist fighters. Kurdish media and officials, who said the attacks had had a “devastating” impact on militant positions, claimed other, unconfirmed attacks that were farther afield. -- U.S. officials also stressed that the American intervention was narrowly aimed at the protection of American diplomats and officials living in Irbil, where the large U.S. consulate has swelled with evacuees from the embassy in Baghdad and where the U.S. military runs a joint operations center alongside Kurdish forces. -- “There are American military and diplomatic personnel in Irbil,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said at a news briefing in Washington. “The protection of American personnel in Iraq is a top priority and one that merits the use of military force.” -- He emphasized that the authorization for airstrikes “is very limited in scope” but did not rule out that there may be additional strikes to protect some of the tens of thousands of members of the minority Yazidi faith trapped by Islamic State fighters on a mountaintop. -- The government of current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki requested the U.S. intervention, Earnest said. But he and other U.S. officials made clear that more comprehensive U.S. engagement in the battle against the militants will not happen unless feuding politicians in Baghdad establish a more inclusive government capable of resolving Sunni grievances that facilitated the Islamic State’s rapid expansion. -- The Iraqi parliament is scheduled to choose a new prime minister, perhaps as early as Sunday, according to U.S. officials who have made clear their preference that Maliki stand down.