US & Arab Airstrikes on ISIS - Islamic State in Syria : News Video

News video on the US and Arab airstrikes on ISIS or Islamic State in Syria.
Military teams from two Arab countries led the United States in a third round of airstrikes against the Islamic State Thursday, targeting militant-held oil facilities in northeastern Syria.

The Pentagon ed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates dropped 80 percent of the bomb tonnage in the overnight strikes, which the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said killed at least 14 militants and five civilians.

Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, said the United States would investigate the allegations of civilian deaths.

He said the United States takes "great care to prevent collateral damage" during bombings and insisted the campaign in Syria is being carried out with precision.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said the attacks targeted small-scale oil refineries that generate up to $2 million per day for the militants.

The U.S. military also continued its air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq, hitting targets near Baghdad, Irbil and Kirkuk.

In northern Syria, Kurdish forces pushed back an advance by Islamic State fighters towards a strategic town on the Turkish border Thursday and appealed for U.S.-led air strikes to target the insurgents' tanks and heavy armaments.

Islamic State launched a new offensive to try to capture the border town of Kobani more than a week ago, besieging it from three sides. At least 140,000 Kurds have fled the town and surrounding villages since Friday, crossing into Turkey.

Kurdish and Islamic State fighters exchanged artillery and machine gun fire in a cluster of villages about 15 km (nine miles) west of Kobani, where the frontline appeared not to have moved significantly for several days, a Reuters witness said.

Kurdish officials meanwhile said Islamic State had concentrated their fighters south of the town late on Wednesday and had pushed towards it, but that the main Kurdish armed group in northern Syria, the YPG, had repelled them overnight.

French fighter jets struck targets in Iraq on Thursday, government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said.

"There were strikes in Iraq this morning,'' Le Foll announced without giving any further details.

The strikes were the first by French jets since September 19 when Paris joined the United States military action against Islamic State insurgents in Iraq who have taken over parts of the country.