Tom Vanden Brook

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military, along with Arab allies, launched the first airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria late Monday, as the war ordered by President Obama against the militant organization took on an urgent new phase.

A statement early Tuesday from the Department of Defense said 14 airstrikes were carried out against ISIL targets.

"The strikes destroyed or damaged multiple ISIL targets in the vicinity of Ar Raqqah, Dayr az Zawr, Al Hasakah, and Abu Kamal and included ISIL fighters, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance center, supply trucks and armed vehicles," the Defense Department said.

The attack was carried out using a mixture of warplanes dropping bombs, remotely piloted aircraft and ships firing cruise missiles.

Aircraft from several Arab states took part in the attack. They were: Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Defense Department.

"We wanted to make sure that ISIL knew they have no safe haven, and we certainly achieved that," Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with a small group of reporters as he flew to Washington after a weeklong trip to Europe.

The Defense Department said the U.S. also took separate action Monday night to disrupt an "imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests conducted by a network of seasoned al-Qaeda veterans — sometimes referred to as the Khorasan Group." This group has used Syria as a safe-haven. Only U.S. assets were used in the strike against Khorasan.

The allied strikes in Syria were not invited by the government of Bashar Assad, although the U.S. advised Syria's United Nations envoy of the upcoming attacks, according to Syria's state news agency.

Assad, is waging a brutal civil war against opponents of his regime, including ISIL militants. It's unclear how Assad will react to the U.S.-led attacks. His military possesses sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles, although most of them are near the capital of Damascus and near the border with Israel.

About two thirds of the estimated 30,000 ISIL fighters are based in Syria. The remainder have captured large parts of northern Iraq, although their momentum has been blunted there by U.S. fighter, bomber and drone aircraft. Last week, French warplanes launched attacks on ISIL targets in Iraq for the first time.

For the last several weeks, U.S. spy planes have been flying over Syria collecting intelligence on potential ISIL targets.

There have been 190 U.S. airstrikes on IS targets in Iraq since bombing there started in August, according to statistics from U.S. Central Command, which coordinates military activity in the region.

The goal of ISIL fighters is to dominate a vast stretch of territory from Iraq to the Mediterranean. Last month, they swept through northern Iraq, capturing Mosul, the country's second-largest city after Baghdad, and threatening the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Kurdish forces and Iraqi commandos, backed by U.S. air power, halted the advance of ISIL fighters and ejected them from control of two key dams near Mosul and Haditha. They also helped prevent the slaughter of religious refugees.

Rolling back IS gains and ultimately destroying the organization, Pentagon and White House officials say, will require competent, local military forces fighting on behalf of representative governments. The formation of a new government in Iraq, rejecting the sectarian rule of Nouri al Maliki, has been hailed by the administration as a step in that direction. U.S. air power alone cannot eliminate the threat from ISIL fighters, officials say.

Also last week, Congress and the president agreed to fund a $500 million program designed to recruit, train and equip a force of moderate Syrians. They will be trained in Saudi Arabia to defend their communities against ISIL fighters and the Syrian regime.

Follow @tvandenbrook on Twitter.