REPORT: More than 160 munitions fired on Syria targets Pentagon -...

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More than 160 munitions, nearly all of them precision-guided, were fired during strikes in Syria by the United States and Arab allies, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said on Tuesday.

The United States had no indication so far that any civilians were killed in the operations, Kirby said, adding that assessments were under way.

An Islamic State fighter said on Tuesday the group will respond to U.S.-led air strikes inside Syria and blamed Saudi Arabia for allowing them to happen.

Meanwhile, the US military said its partners in air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria included Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

In a CENTCOM statement, it added the U.S. military had taken action to disrupt "imminent attack" against the U.S. and Western interests by "seasoned al Qaeda veterans" who had established a safe haven in Syria.

The statement said the U.S. had launched strikes from warships in international waters in the Red Sea and the North Arabian Gulf.

It said Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi and the UAE had "also participated in or supported the air strikes against Islamic State targets. All aircraft safely exited the strike areas," it said.

Hundreds of residents fled Syria's northern city of Raqqa after U.S. warplanes struck positions held by Islamic State militants in the city, two witnesses there said.

The attacks, which took place in the early hours of Tuesday, hit several buildings and military bases occupied by IS in the province, including the 93rd Brigade and Tabqa military airport, which the group seized last month, as well as the main administrative building in the city.

The two-story building, which lies in a densely populated area in the city center, was used as an office by the group, which had turned its basement into a prison. The fate of prisoners was not immediately clear.

Electricity in the city was cut off, residents said. Shops and markets were closed and the streets were empty except for fleeing residents packed in cars carrying a few belongings.

Residents in the city said the hardline IS fighters had banned people from approaching the bombed building, making it difficult to assess the losses.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in the country, said the group lost 70 of its fighters in the attacks in the eastern and northern parts of the country. Only one was killed in the air raid on the administrative building.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the death toll from US strikes in northern Syria has risen to 50, adding that most of those killed in the strikes, which targeted fighters from the Nusra Front in the northern Idlib area, had been non-Syrians.

He also said that eight civilians including children were killed in the air strikes.

The United States has been building a coalition to combat Islamic State, an extremist Sunni Muslim force that has seized large expanses of territory in Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate erasing borders in the heart of the Middle East.

The addition of Arab allies was seen as crucial for the credibility of the American-led campaign. U.S. allies in the Middle East are skeptical of how far Washington will commit to a conflict in which nearly every country in the region has a stake, set against the backdrop of Islam's 1,300-year-old rift between Sunnis and Shiites.

Russia

The Russian Foreign Ministry said any airstrikes against Islamic State's positions on Syrian territory must be agreed with Damascus and otherwise will fuel tension in the region.

"Any such action can be carried out only in accordance with international law. That implies not a formal, one-sided 'notification' of airstrikes but the presence of explicit consent from the government of Syria or the approval of a corresponding U.N. Security Council decision," it said in a statement.

"Attempts to achieve one's own geopolitical goals in violation of the sovereignty of countries in the region only exacerbates tensions and further destabilizes the situation."

Britain

Britain said on Tuesday that no final decision had been made over whether to join air strikes launched by the United States and several Gulf Arab allies on Islamic State strongholds in Syria.

A spokeswoman at the Ministry of Defense said discussions were still ongoing.

The office of British Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain was not currently part of the action against Islamic State militants who have seized large expanses of territory in Iraq and Syria.

NATO

NATO said it was not involved in US-led strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria.

"There is no NATO involvement," an alliance official said in response to a query from Reuters.

The United States and Arab allies hit Islamic State targets including training camps, headquarters and weapon supplies in northern and eastern Syria in dozens of air and missile strikes on Tuesday, the U.S. military and a monitoring group said.

UAE

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) air force took part in strikes on Islamic State targets overnight, the Gulf Arab country's official WAM news agency reported.

The operation took place "in coordination with participating forces in the international efforts against Da'esh", the agency quoted a foreign ministry statement as saying, using a widely used term for Islamic State militants.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's air force participated in military operations against the Islamic State group in Syria, Saudi Press Agency reported on Wednesday, citing an official source.

The source added that the operations were to support the moderate Syrian opposition as part of an international coalition to combat terrorism, but did not give further details about the Saudi role.

Turkey

Turkey could give military or logistical support to U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State insurgents in Syria, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

"We will give the necessary support to the operation. The support could be military or logistics," Erdogan was quoted by Turkish broadcaster NTV as telling reporters in New York.

Syria's foreign ministry

Syria's foreign ministry said the United States informed Damascus' envoy to the United Nations before launching airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria.

Syrian state media carried a brief statement from the foreign ministry early on Tuesday, saying that "the American side informed Syria's permanent envoy to the UN that strikes will be launched against the Daesh terrorist organization in Raqqa."

The statement used an Arabic name referring to the Islamic State group. The city of Raqqa is the militant group's self-declared capital in Syria.

It was Damascus' first official reaction after the U.S. and five Arab countries launched airstrikes on Islamic State group's targets in Syria late Monday, expanding a military campaign into a country whose three-year civil war has given the brutal militant group a safe haven.

Syrian opposition Syria's Western-backed National Coalition opposition group welcomed air strikes by the United States and Gulf Arab allies on Islamic State strongholds in Syria on Tuesday, saying they would strengthen its struggle against President Bashar al-Assad.

"This will make us stronger in the fight against Assad...The campaign should continue until the Islamic State is completely eradicated from Syrian lands," Monzer Akbik, special envoy to the president of the coalition, told Reuters.

Syrian Kurds

The dominant Kurdish political group in Syria welcomed U.S.-led strikes on Islamic State militants in the country and said on Tuesday that it wanted to coordinate on confronting the militant group.

"We look forward to coordinating with the (anti-Islamic State) coalition in the face of terrorism, which threatens all human values in the Middle East," Democratic Union Party (PYD) leader Salih Muslim said in a statement.

It also said that the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria was still at risk from Islamic State, whose attacks in the surrounding countryside have driven tens of thousands of Kurds across the border into Turkey.

White House

The United States made strikes in Syria to disrupt planning by the Khorasan group, an al Qaeda affiliate, to launch imminent attacks against U.S. or European targets, a senior White House official told reporters on Tuesday.

"For some time now, we've been tracking plots to conduct attacks in the United States or Europe," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser.

"We believe that attack plotting was imminent and that they had plans to conduct attacks external to Syria," Rhodes told reporters traveling with Obama to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

Red Cross

The United States and its allies must comply with the rules of war in carrying out air strikes on Islamist targets in Iraq and Syria, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday.

The humanitarian agency is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions that lay down the rules of war, primarily aimed at protecting civilians caught up in armed conflicts.

Robert Mardini, head of ICRC operations for the Near and Middle East, asked about air strikes on Syria, told Reuters Television: "What is extremely important for us is that whatever country takes part in the hostilities has to comply with the basic rules and principles of international humanitarian law."

UN's Ban

Airstrikes by the United States and Arab allies on Islamic State militants in Syria were targeting extremists who pose a serious threat to international peace and security, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

"I'm aware that today's strikes were not carried out at the direct request of the Syrian government but I note that the government was informed beforehand," Ban said at a joint news conference with French President Francois Hollande on the sidelines of a U.N. conference on climate change.

"I also note that the strikes took place in areas no longer under the effective control of that government," he added. "It is undeniable and the subject of broad international consensus that these extremist groups pose an immediate threat to international peace and security."

REUTERS/AP

To watch Nada Andraos's report, please click on the video above.