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 and Iraq, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to say American leadership was “the one constant in an uncertain world”.

Later on Saturday an al-Qaida-linked group in Syria, the Nusra Front, vowed to retaliate against countries taking part in the air strikes.

Obama said “America is leading the world in the fight to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group” known as Isis, and aded: “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.”

On Saturday afternoon, the Department of Defence released a statement regarding the participants in and targets of the latest strikes, which said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates had participated in strikes on Syria.

The statement said: “US and partner nation military forces continued to attack ‪Isis terrorists in‪ Syria‬ Friday and today, using fighter and remotely piloted aircraft to conduct seven airstrikes. Separately, US military forces used attack aircraft to conduct three airstrikes against Isis in Iraq.”

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”.



A number of Nusra Front militants were killed in the first strikes on Syria, on Tuesday. More than 200 strikes have been carried out in Iraq since 8 August.

In an audio message posted on the group’s social-media network on Saturday a spokesman, Abu Firas al-Suri, said: “We are in a long war. This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades. It’s not a war against Nusra Front, it’s a war against Islam.

“These countries have done a despicable act that will put them on the list of those targeted by jihadist forces all over the world.”

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.

On Saturday, international activists and local sources said the US-led coalition attacking Isis in Syria had launched strikes on militants attacking Kobani, a town near the Turkish border, and on positions including wheat silos in the east of the country.



The Department of Defence statement detailed the targets of the strikes. In Syria, it said, “an Isis vehicle was destroyed south of Al-Hasakah. Also near Al-Hasakah several buildings that were part of an Isis garrison were destroyed. An Isis command and control facility near Manbij was damaged. An Isis building and two armed vehicles at the Kobani border crossing were destroyed.

“An Isis-held airfield, an Isis garrison and an Isis training camp near Ar Raqqah were damaged.”

Turkish Kurds gather to see the fighting between Isis fighters and the Protection of the Kurdish people (YPG) fighters in the next village on the Syrian side. Photograph: Stringer/Getty Images

Regarding Iraq, the statement said: “Three airstrikes south-west of Irbil destroyed four Isis armed vehicles and destroyed an Isis fighting position.”

Syria’s foreign minister, meanwhile, told a Lebanon-based television channel that air strikes alone “will not be able wipe out” Isis. Speaking from New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly, Walid al-Moallem said the US should work with Damascus if it wants to win the war.

“They must know the importance of coordination with the people of this country because they know what goes on there,” al-Moallem said.

The US has ruled out any coordination with President Bashar Assad’s government, which is at war with Isis as well as western-backed rebels.

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party, told the Associated Press some of the strikes on Saturday 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.

A warplane comes in to land at Britain’s RAF base in Akrotiri, Cyprus. Photograph: Petros Karadjias/AP

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.”