US Airstrikes Should Target all Militant Groups, Says Syrian Foreign Minister

Syria's foreign minister Walid al Moallem said Monday that the U.S. led airstrikes should also target militant groups other than the Islamic State.

The Islamic State, Nusra Front and all other Islamic rebel groups who were fighting the Assad government were on the same side and should be targeted, Moallem said.

"They have the same ideology. They have the same extremist ideology," Moallem said,  reports the Associated Press.

The Syrian foreign Minister said that Syria considers itself on the same side of the west as both were fighting the same enemy

"We are fighting ISIS, they are fighting ISIS," he said, referring to the Islamic State group by one of its acronyms.

At a news conference in Damascus last month, Moallem had said that conducting strikes without coordinating with the Assad government would be regarded as aggression by the Syrian government.

However, on Monday Moallem denied having made such a statement and said that Syria was satisfied if the U.S. just informed it about impending airstrikes. He acknowledged that the U.S. officials informed the Assad government before they started the airstrikes in Syria last week.

Regarding Syria's view on the five Arab countries that have joined the U.S. led air strikes in Syria, Moallem said that these countries were free to take a decision on the matter.

Syria would not find fault with the participation of the Arab countries as long as they were hitting Islamic State targets, he added.

Moallem said that a political solution without intervention of outsiders was the only way out of the civil war, though the Syrian army was fighting to regain territory taken by the Islamic State militants.

However, the political solution must take into account the opinion of the Syrian people, he said.

Meanwhile, U.S. airstrikes on Sunday night hit grain silos and other targets in Islamic State territory in Syria killing civilians and injuring militants, Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said .

The Organization said the US aircrafts may have misjudged the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an Islamic State base. 

Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said that the strikes in Manbij seemed to have killed only civilians.

"These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people," he said, reports Reuters.