WASHINGTON – A Pentagon spokesman says the United States executed two airstrikes Wednesday on an Islamic State group staging area in eastern Syria.
Rear Adm. John Kirby says the target of the strikes was an area used by the militants to move equipment across the border into Iraq.
Earlier Wednesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported airstrikes in and around the eastern Syrian city of Boukamal.
Kirby told CNN that the U.S. also struck Islamic State targets in Iraq, near the Kurdish city of Irbil and the capital, Baghdad.
The American-led coalition conducted more than 200 airstrikes on Tuesday against roughly two dozen targets in Syria, including several in Boukamal along the Syria-Iraq border.
The Islamic State group controls a vast stretch of territory spanning the frontier. Its fighters are waging a two-front war, in Iraq and Syria, as they seek to expand the boundaries of their self-declared proto-state ruled by a strict interpretation of Islamic law. The U.N. has accused the group of committing atrocities in both countries.
The U.S.-led campaign against the extremists has met with mixed reaction from Syria’s multitude of rebel brigades, many of whom have been locked in a deadly fight with Islamic State militants since January. But the rebels’ ultimate goal is to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, while the U.S. is focused on defeating the Islamic State group.
On Wednesday, the main Western-backed Syrian opposition group criticized the American-led airstrikes for being limited to the Islamic State group and other extremists while leaving Assad’s government untouched.
“We regret that the international community has come up with partial solutions to the Syrian conflict in which hundreds of thousands were killed or detained by the Assad regime,” said Nasr al-Hariri, secretary general of the Syrian National Coalition.
In a statement, al-Hariri also said that any effort other than helping Syrians overthrow Assad will only further fuel extremism.
