DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - President Bashar Assad said Tuesday he supports any international effort against terrorism, apparently trying to position his government on the side of the U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria.
Assad's remarks came hours after the opening salvo in what the United States has warned will be a lengthy campaign to defeat the extremists who have seized control of a huge swath of territory spanning the Syria-Iraq border. Damascus said the U.S. informed it beforehand that the strikes were coming.
One Syrian activist group reported that dozens of Islamic State fighters were killed in the pre-dawn strikes, but the numbers could not be independently confirmed. Several activists also reported at least 10 civilians killed.
Some Syrian rebels fighting to oust Assad welcomed the American-led strikes, but others expressed frustration that the coalition was only targeting the Islamic State group and not the Syrian government.
One rebel faction that has received U.S.-made advanced weapons, Harakat Hazm, criticized the airstrikes, saying they violate Syria's sovereignty and undermine the anti-Assad revolution.
"The only party benefiting from the foreign intervention in Syria is the Assad regime, especially in the absence of a real strategy to bring it down," the group said in a statement posted on its Twitter feed.
The air campaign expanded to also hit al-Qaida's branch in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, which has fought against the Islamic State group. Washington considers it a terrorist group threatening the U.S., although Western-backed Syrian rebel groups frequently cooperate with Nusra Front fighters on the battlefield.
In a meeting Tuesday with an Iraqi envoy, Assad voiced his support for "any international anti-terrorism effort," according to the state news agency SANA. Assad did not specifically mention the coalition airstrikes, but said Syria is "decisively continuing in the war it has waged for years against extremist terrorism in all its forms."
He also stressed that all nations must commit to stop support for terrorism - an apparent reference to countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar who are strong backers of Syrian rebels, whom the Syrian government calls terrorists.