The Iraqi parliament rejected Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s nominees for defence and interior ministers yesterday, leaving the two crucial posts unfilled.

As MPs in the divided parliament failed to agree, US jets carried out an air strike near Baghdad for the first time since launching an aerial campaign in early August and French warplanes began daily reconnaissance missions.

Mr Abadi had advanced Sunni MP Jaber al-Jabberi as his candidate for defence minister and Shi’ite MP Riyad Ghareeb as interior minister. 

But the parliament voted 118-117 against Mr Ghareeb and 131-108 against Mr Jabberi.

Military spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan Ibrahim said the US air strike hit Sadr al-Yusifiya, about 12 miles south of Baghdad.

French planes flew from the United Arab Emirates as part of Paris’s commitment to provide aerial support to the Iraqi government.

But similar support to that given to Iraq was not extended to the Syrians fighting against the Islamic State group (Isis).

The UN human-rights commission claimed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government had committed the bulk of atrocities in the civil war.

Commission head Paulo Sergio Pinheiro alleged that the government’s killing of civilians exceeded the crimes perpetrated by Isis and other anti-government groups.

Isis extremists are not “the sole agents of death and destruction inside Syria,” Mr Pinheiro told the 47-nation Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“The Syrian government remains responsible for the majority of casualties, killing and maiming scores of civilians daily — both from a distance using shelling and aerial bombardment and up close, at its checkpoints and in its interrogation rooms,” he claimed.

Syrian envoy Houssam el-Dine Alaa denounced the report as “politicised and unprofessional” and based on “unbelievable testimonies.”

The US also joined in the chorus of disapproval, warning it would retaliate against Syria’s air force if it interfered with US planes launching air strikes.

US officials have ruled out direct co-ordination with Syria and insisted against all logic that a campaign against Isis would not strengthen the government’s hold on power.