The US-led coalition said the strikes against the group "Islamic State" (IS) had been one of its most sustained air operations carried out to date.

"The significant airstrikes tonight were executed to deny Daesh the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq," according to coalition spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gilleran, who used the Arabic acronym Daesh for the IS group.

The joint-command statement issued on Sunday detailed a total of 38 airstrikes on targets belonging to IS in Syria and in Iraq on Saturday. Tactical units and vehicles had been hit and sixteen bridges were destroyed in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, as well as Hasaka and Kobani, according to the statement.

Raqqa has become the center of the IS control of territory which extends across both Iraq and Syria.

"This was one of the largest deliberate engagements we have conducted to date in Syria, and it will have debilitating effects on Daesh's ability to move" from Raqqa, Gilleran said.

There were twelve strikes on IS targets near eight cities in Iraq. A statement from Iraq's Defense Ministry on Sunday said government forces repelled an IS attack Sunday morning on the town of Haditha and the nearby Haditha dam in Anbar province. It claimed 20 militants were killed in the attack but did not provide any further information.

Last month IS lost control of the border town of Tal Abyad to Kurdish fighters. The Turkish border town was a major conduit for the group to smuggle in supplies.

The Turkish newspaper Hürriyet newspaper reported on Sunday that the Turkish army had called a meeting for next week of the commanders of the 54,000 soldiers deployed along the Syrian border.

Turkey is believed to have increased its military defenses on the volatile border in the last week as fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has intensified. The build-up has fed speculation that Ankara is planning to intervene in Syria to push back IS and halt Kurdish forces, which have made gains against IS in the area.

jm/jr (AFP, Reuters)

 

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