REPORT: Air strikes in Syria hit Islamic State at Iraqi border,...

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Five air strikes hit Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria near the Iraqi border on Wednesday, a group that tracks the Syrian war said.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters the raids had hit the border town of Albu Kamal and surrounding areas.

It was not clear who had mounted the air raid. A US-led alliance launched air strikes on Islamic State in Syria on Tuesday. A spokesman for the US military said those strikes were "only the beginning".

"The people there, the activists, say they (the strikes) are probably the (international) coalition, not the regime," Abdulrahman said, referring to the Syrian government. "The strength of the explosions is greater. Like yesterday."

The area around Albu Kamal in eastern Syria has been the focus of heavy bombing by US-led forces. The Observatory said around 22 strikes hit the area on Tuesday.

Albu Kamal is one of the main border crossings between Iraq and Syria along a frontier that Islamic State wants to erase after seizing territory both sides.

Weaponry seized by Islamic State in Iraq during a lighting offense in June and taken across the border has helped the group secure more land in Syria.

The Observatory gathers its information from a network of activists across Syria. The Islamic State has reinforced fighters who are battling Kurdish forces for control of a Syrian town at the border with Turkey in the last day, a redeployment triggered by U.S.-led air strikes on the group elsewhere, a Kurdish military official said.

Ocalan Iso, deputy leader of the Kurdish forces defending the town of Kobani at the Turkish border, said more Islamic State fighters and tanks had arrived since the U.S.-led coalition began air strikes on the group on Tuesday.

"The number of their fighters has increased, the number of their tanks has increased since the bombardment of Raqqa," Iso told Reuters by telephone.

Islamic State-controlled territory in the city and province of Raqqa was hit in the air strikes on Tuesday. He said Islamic State forces had advanced to within 8 km (5 miles) from the southern periphery of Kobani, which is also known as Ayn al-Arab - closer than they had been at any stage.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, has evacuated its bases in populated parts of the Idlib countryside in northwest Syria after U.S.-led forces carried out strikes on the group, some of its fighters said.

Another Syrian Islamist group, Ahrar al-Sham, has also ordered its followers to evacuate bases, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group said. The Observatory confirmed the Nusra withdrawal.

Khorasan leader

The United States believes that a US strike in Syria has killed Mohsin al-Fadhli, the leader of a group of al Qaeda militants known as Khorasan, a U.S. official told Reuters on Wednesday.

"We believe he is dead," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials have said the al Qaeda-linked group posed an immediate threat to the West and had been nearing the execution of a plot against U.S. or European targets.

Syrian Minister:

A Syrian government minister said U.S.-led air strikes against militants are going in the "right direction" because the government had been informed before they started and they were not hitting civilians or Syrian military targets.

"What has happened so far is proceeding in the right direction in terms of informing the Syrian government and by not targeting Syrian military installations and not targeting civilians," Ali Haidar, minister for national reconciliation, told Reuters.

Russia's Foreign Ministry:

Russia's Foreign Ministry said the legitimacy of some U.S. air strikes against Islamic State are in doubt because of the lack of approval from Syria, where some of the strikes are being carried out, and the United Nations.

"There is doubt over the legitimacy of the strikes as such actions can only be carried out with the approval of the United Nations and the unequivocal permission of the authorities of the country where they are taking place, which in this case is the government in Damascus," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

LBCI/REUTERS

For more details, watch Nada Andraos' report in the VIDEO above