Photograph: Staff Sgt. Shawn Nickel/AP
As British jets took off from Cyprus to carry out strikes on Islamic State (Isis) targets in Iraq on Saturday, and US-led strikes continued in Syria, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to say American leadership was 'the one constant in an uncertain world'.
'America is leading the world in the fight to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group' known as Isis, Obama said, adding: 'I made it clear that America would act as part of a broad coalition, and we were joined in this action by friends and partners, including Arab nations.'
Obama worked to build the coalition and gain backing for the strikes in Syria at the United Nations in New York this week, chairing a special meeting of the security council. In a speech to the general assembly, he vowed to tackle ' the cancer of violent extremism '.
Strikes in Syria began on Tuesday; more than 200 strikes have been carried out in Iraq since 8 August. Isis fighters have created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border, killing thousands; militants have also beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker, provoking widespread revulsion.
International activists and local sources said the US-led coalition attacking Isis in Syria had launched strikes on militants attacking a town near the Turkish border and on positions including wheat silos in the east of the country.
Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party, told the Associated Press some of the strikes had targeted for the first time Isis positions near the northern town of Kobani, which has been under attack for days. Khalil said the strikes destroyed two tanks and added that the town was later shelled by Isis, wounding several civilians.
A Kurdish fighter, Majid Goran, told the AP by telephone from Kobani that two bombs were dropped over the village of Ali Shan, nearby, at 6am. Goran said the strikes were ineffective and that the positions hit 'were empty'.
A Turkish news agency, Dogan, reported that heavy fighting could be heard from the Turkish border village of Karaca.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some strikes targeted Isis compounds in the central province of Homs and the northern region of Raqqa. The group said 31 explosions were heard in the city of Raqqa, the group's de facto capital, and its suburbs.
The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said the strikes hit the eastern province of Deir el-Zour as well as Raqqa, and also said the coalition targeted wheat silos west of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour.
Saturday's strikes came after two days of strikes by the US and its Arab allies on makeshift oil-producing facilities in Deir el-Zour, trying to cripple black-market oil sales the US says produce up to $2m a day.
The activists had no immediate word on casualties. The Observatory reported on Friday that 13 civilians have been killed by the strikes since they began.
In his address, Obama also said America was leading the world in its response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the increasing threat of climate change.
'The people of the world look to us to lead,' he said. 'And we welcome that responsibility.'
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