The American-led coalition’s bombing campaign against Islamist militants in Syria has focused new attention on the hundreds of Westerners among their ranks.

In television interviews broadcast this week, American, Australian and Dutch citizens who traveled to Syria to take part in the jihad against President Bashar al-Assad’s government expressed bitterness at the airstrikes their nations have carried out against Islamist rebels.

In an interview with CBS News conducted recently inside Syria, a Somali-American who calls himself Ibn Zubayr explained that he joined the Nusra Front, an Islamist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, two years ago, moved by the plight of the Syrian people under attack by their own government. Nusra fighters whom Ibn Zubayr called “close friends” were killed in the first wave of American airstrikes late last month.