– Gas plant warning shot –
In Syria, the raids have increasingly targeted oil and other economic infrastructure that funds the jihadists as well as military targets.
During Sunday night, coalition warplanes hit targets around the IS-held town of Minbej, including a complex of grain silos and a mill that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said was being operated by civilians.
The group’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said there were initial reports of civilian casualties in the raid, but no confirmed toll.
The coalition also struck the entrance of the country’s main gas plant in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor in an apparent warning to IS militants to abandon the facility.
The plant feeds a key power station in regime-held Homs province and several provinces would be left without electricity if it stopped functioning, the Observatory said.
Earlier on Sunday, coalition strikes targeted four makeshift oil refineries near the Turkish border as part of an intensifying efforts to disrupt the jihadists’ lucrative oil-pumping and smuggling operations.
“Initial indications are that they (the strikes) were successful,” US Central Command said.
The swathe of territory that IS controls straddling northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria includes most of Syria’s main oilfields.
Experts say the jihadists were earning as much as $3 million (2.4 million euros) a day from black-market oil sales before the US-led air campaign began.
US warplanes began strikes against jihadist targets in Syria last Tuesday with the support of Arab allies, expanding an air campaign that Washington began in Iraq on August 8.
Several European governments have approved plans to join the air campaign in Iraq, including most recently Britain, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Ankara “cannot stay” out of the fight.
The Turkish government was to send motions to parliament later Monday requesting the extension of mandates for military action in Iraq and Syria so Ankara can join the coalition against IS.
Lawmakers are to debate the motions on Thursday.
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