PARIS: France said Friday its fighter jets were conducting a “major” raid in Iraq as part of the US-led coalition offensive against the Islamic State group, days after members said the strikes were having effect.

“At the moment, a major raid is taking place,” Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFMTV, refusing to detail the targets or the number of jets involved.

He said French planes based in the UAE and more recently in Jordan had carried out “120 to 130 missions” since the start of the coalition offensive.

These include intelligence gathering missions. Compared to the US, France has carried out only a handful of strikes on the militants.

Paris has so far refused to join the United States in its air war against IS in Syria, but on Wednesday, President Francois Hollande said France was ready to step up its actions against the militants in Iraq.

The same day, a meeting in Brussels of countries in the coalition concluded that the IS group’s advance was finally being stopped thanks to the strikes — a claim reiterated Friday by Le Drian.

“But this halt does not mean that the war is over,” he warned.

Meanwhile, a German court on Friday convicted a 20-year-old German of joining the IS and sentenced him to 3 years and 9 months in prison. Judges found Kreshnik Berisha, whose parents are from Kosovo, guilty of membership and activity for a foreign terrorist organization, the Frankfurt regional court said in a statement.

Berisha, a Muslim, traveled to the Turkish city of Istanbul in July 2013, where he and six others were picked up by IS recruiters and taken to Syria.

Berisha underwent combat training and took part in combat operations near the Syrian city of Hama, but was largely kept away from the front line.

While in Syria he maintained contact with his family in Germany and agreed to their pleas for him to return home five months later. Berisha was arrested at Frankfurt Airport in December 2013.

Judges said Berisha’s sentence took account of the fact that he had confessed to his actions and testified during the trial. To his detriment, they considered the “particular threat” posed by the Islamic State group, “which has carried out terrorist attacks and armed assaults in Syria and Iraq which have killed and injured a large number of people.”

Meanwhile, the IS has executed three Iraqi tribal leaders outside a government building in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights reported on Friday.